Hello, we are TheSpaceXFans and welcome to TheSpaceXShow, the place where you can stay
up to date with everything SpaceX.
We can hopefully expect the next Falcon 9 mission in a couple of days.
The Starlink 3-5 mission is currently scheduled for Tuesday 25th at 1:02pm UTC or 9:02am EDT.
We could also see another couple of launches this coming week in addition to the Starlink
mission.
The Falcon Heavy Viasat-3 & Aurora 4A mission is currently scheduled for Wednesday 26th
at 11:24pm UTC or 7:24pm EDT.
Following that, we can hopeful expect to see the O3b mPower 3 & 4 mission lift off on Friday
28th at 9:12pm UTC or 5:12pm EDT.
As you’re very aware by now, Starship lifted off on Thursday for the first integrated flight
test, let’s watch it again.
[SpaceX Commentary: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Booster upper chamber pressure is nominal.
T+ 33 seconds into the test flight of the inaugural Starship vehicle.
Tower cleared, we’re going to pitch over.
{inaudible}... reports first stage engines nominal, what a sight from the ground cameras
at Starbase.
We’re flying at twice the thrust of the Saturn V, heading to space.
Acquisition of signal, Cupis Christie.
We throttled down and throttled back up.
Going through the period of maximum aerodynamic pressure.
As the velocity increases, the density of the atmosphere
is decreasing...
MaxQ…
Lessening stress on the vehicle.
Callout, MaxQ now.
Continuing to watch the first stage as we head downrange.
Hundred seconds into flight.
Our next major activity is going to be shutdown of the first stage.
Houston tracking station now acquiring the vehicle.
With shutdown, we will get separation of Starship from Super Heavy and ignition of the Starship
engines.
When Starship separates, we light up 6 engines in a staggered sequence.
And if all goes well, those 6 engines will burn for almost 6 and a half minutes.
Onboard view from Starship.
And there’s views of the Raptor engines on the second stage, as we prepare for stage
separation.
Now, after stage separation, the first stage will flip and begin a boostback manoeuvre
for landing in the Gulf.
Continuing to fly.
2 minutes, 40 seconds, let’s get ready for main engine cutoff.
Booster engine cutoff.
Beginning the flip for stage separation…
As of right now, we are awaiting stage separation…
Where Starship should separate from the Super Heavy booster.
Yeah; Kate, right now, it looks like we saw the start of the flip, but obviously we’re
seeing from the ground cameras, the entire Starship stack continuing to rotate, we should’ve
had separation by now.
Obviously this is, does not appear to be a nominal situation.
Yeah, it does appear to be spinning, but I do want to remind everyone that, everything
after clearing the tower, was icing on the cake.
And there as you saw, as we promised, an exciting end to the Starship inaugural integrated test
flight.
Everyone here absolutely pumped to clear the pad and make it this far into the test flight,
the first integrated flight of the Booster and the Starship vehicle.”]
Obviously, it was far from an ideal outcome but they gained a lot of data which was the
goal of the flight.
Christian Davenport posted a Tweet saying “Well that was a successful failure, as
they say.
FAA confirms no reports of any injuries.
SpaceX and NASA pleased with the test flight.”
I wanted to share this cool video SpaceX posted on Twitter of
the launch.
SpaceX posted another Tweet with these cool pictures of Starship.
They said “Starship successfully lifted off from the orbital launch pad and climbed
to an apogee of ~39 km over the Gulf of Mexico.”
There was also this cool slow motion video of Starship clearing the tower posted.
There was this picture posted on Twitter of the Starship before FTS was triggered and
the remains of Super Heavy slightly attached.
This picture was posted on Twitter with a camera view of Starship.
It appears some but not many heat shield tiles fell off during launch.
There appears to be immense damage to the orbital launch pad after the Starship launch.
Unfortunately, there’s a literal crater and you can see the rebar and it’s a big
mess down there.
This could take quite some time to repair, if it’s even salvageable at all.
RGV Aerial Photography posted this construction image from 2020 vs the pad after the launch.
Musk posted a Tweet in response to this.
He said “All that’s left of the concrete lateral support beam is the rebar!
Hopefully, this doesn’t gronk the launch mount.”
Eric Berger posted a Tweet about the damage to the pad.
He said “The damage in Boca Chica at Starbase launch site looks pretty serious, but a former
senior SpaceXer from there says he believes the pad can be repaired; and a (water-cooled)
flame diverter installed in 4 to 6 months.
Just passing on what I was told.”
Musk responded with “3 months ago, we started building a massive water-cooled, steel plate
to go under the launch mount.
Wasn’t ready in time & we wrongly thought, based on static fire data, that Fondag would
make it through 1 launch.
Looks like we can be ready to launch again in 1 to 2 months.”
Then Musk responded again with “Still in early analysis, but the force of the engines
when they throttled up may have shattered the concrete, rather than simply eroding it.
The engines were only at half thrust for the static fire test.”
Related to the water-cooled steel plates, RGV Aerial Photography posted this picture
on Twitter.
It says “These are the water cooled steel plates Elon Musk said would go under the OLM.”
I wanted to share this other side by side picture posted on Reddit of what the pad looked
like and what it looks like now just to show the scale of the damage.
There are a lot of bits of that mount on the right that you can see that should be underground.
Eric Berger posted a Tweet related to employees’ reactions of the Starship launch.
It says “I've spoken with half a dozen employees at SpaceX since the launch.
If their reaction is anything to go by, the Starship test flight was a spectacular success.
Of course there's a ton to learn, to fix, and to improve.
It's all super hard work.
But what's new?
Progress is hard.”
With all the concrete and pieces of orbital launch pad that went flying everywhere, there
was quite a lot of damage.
Here’s a view of the orbital tank farm where there are some big tents in some of the tanks.
I believe there is also some leaks with some of the tanks.
Starhopper is still standing strong but did take some damage.
The skin appears to be pretty damaged after the launch.
There is another picture I want to share from Jack Beyer of a vehicle that NASASpaceflight
had cameras setup on, near to the pad.
It got hit by a piece of concrete and the whole back caved in.
There’s an updated Starship production diagram to take a look at thanks to TheRingWatchers.
That’s it for this episode of TheSpaceXShow, I hope you enjoyed the video, if you did,
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