Hello, we are TheSpaceXFans and welcome to TheSpaceXShow,
the place where you can stay up to date with everything SpaceX.
Starting off this video, we have a couple of launches to take a look at, starting with
SpaceX’s next commercial resupply mission, with the CRS-22 launch. [SpaceX Commentator:
“Ignition. And liftoff of the 22nd SpaceX cargo resupply mission.”] The booster, which was brand
new on this mission, then landed successfully for the first time on the droneship Of Course
I Still Love You. [SpaceX Commentator: “Picture perfect landing of that Falcon 9 first stage.
First landing for this first stage. 86th successful recovery overall for SpaceX.”]
Then, earlier in the day today, SpaceX launched yet another mission with the SXM-8
launch. [SpaceX Commentator: “Zero. Ignition. And liftoff.”]
The booster which launched this mission, B1061, landed successfully for the 3rd time on the
droneship Just Read The Instructions. [SpaceX Commentator: “And we have touchdown of Falcon 9.
Falcon 9 has just landed on our droneship, Just Read The Instructions. Today marks the 87th
overall successful recovery of an orbital class rocket. As well as SpaceX’s 125th
successful mission to date.”] CRS-22’s Dragon capsule arrived at the ISS a day or so after
it launched. NASA tweeted on Saturday “Contact and capture are confirmed at 5:09am ET. SpaceX’s
cargo Dragon has arrived at the Space Station, delivering over 7,300 pounds of ISS Research,
equipment, supplies, and new roll-out solar arrays for the orbiting lab.”
There is an article from SpaceNews regarding some satellites on SpaceX’s next dedicated
rideshare mission. The article says “A pair of cubesats built by General Atomics for the Space
Development Agency will seek to demonstrate optical communications between satellites,
and from satellites to a military drone aircraft. The satellites are scheduled to
fly to a sun-synchronous orbit later this month aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission called
Transporter-2.” Whilst not directly related to SpaceX, it’s worth mentioning, the US Air Force
has recently announced it is interested in sending cargo around the Earth using commercial rockets.
This CNBC article says “Called Rocket Cargo, the experimental military program will be led
by the U.S. Space Force, the Pentagon said. The program will research and help develop
capabilities such as landing ‘a rocket on a wide range of non-traditional materials and surfaces,’
engineering ‘a rocket cargo bay and logistics for rapid loading and unloading’ and air-dropping
‘cargo from the rocket after re-entry in order to service locations where a rocket or aircraft
cannot possibly land.’” In Boca Chica, here’s a view of the work on the orbital launch site
tank farm. The crane for stacking the integration tower is being extended to stack more segments.
Here’s a great overview of the whole orbital launch site area. All the cap extensions for the
orbital launch mount legs have been installed. At the propellant production site, the next vehicle
integration tower segments are progressing. So too are the cryo tank shells for the GSE
tanks at the orbital tank farm. In the production yard, crews are working on a new transport mount.
Eric Ralph posted a couple of interesting tweets related to Starship. The first says “SpaceX is
hiring a Starship Medical Engineer to ‘design, integrate, and implement a medical system of
the future [for Starship]’ and ‘provide medical support during flight operations’”. Then he posted
“That sounds to me like future crew Starships will have their own dedicated medical facilities. Hard
for my scifi-molded mind to not read between the lines of this post and see it as SpaceX attempting
to develop a real-life spaceship med bay.” Here’s a view of the SN20 aft dome with vacuum Raptor
mounting points. The Super Heavy BN2.1 test tank was prepared over the last few weeks for testing.
This test tank and stand have since been moved to the launch site to begin testing.
Another section of Super Heavy BN3 has been moved into the Highbay for stacking.
The upper stack for the Super Heavy Booster Number 3 prototype was seen outside. As we always do,
we will finish our Sunday video with the latest Starbase production diagram thanks to Brendan
Lewis. Progress with SN20 and BN3 is coming along nicely as SpaceX looks to get orbital as quickly
as possible with Starship and Super Heavy. As always, I like to finish my videos by saying
thank you to Mary, or BocaChicaGal who is out there all the time filming the Starbase content.
Also, thank you to the NASASpaceflight team working hard behind the scenes on their videos,
livestreams and other space content. That’s it for this episode of TheSpaceXShow, I hope you
enjoyed the video, if you did, make sure to hit the like button and leave a comment down below.
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