Hello, we are TheSpaceXFans and welcome to TheSpaceXShow, the place where you can stay
up to date with everything SpaceX.
We have 2 Starlink launches to start this video, the first of which is Starlink-20 which
launched on Thursday.
The booster which launched the mission, B1058, then landed successfully for the 6th time
on the droneship Just Read The Instructions.
[Commentator: “Alright, and there you can see we’ve landed first stage on our droneship
Just Read The Instructions.
This marks out 76th recovery of an orbital class rocket and the 6th recovery for this
particular booster.”]
Earlier today, SpaceX also launched another batch of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit
with the Starlink-21 mission.
The booster which launched today was a record setting life leader, B1051 and became the
first orbital class rocket booster to land 9 times.
ArsTechnica posted a tweet about an article saying “Rocket Lab will directly challenge
SpaceX with its proposed Neutron launcher.”
Musk responded with “Falcon 9 is almost always at max capacity.
When it has “spare” performance, it flies back to land, which costs much less than using
a droneship.
Our fundamental constraint is mass to orbit per unit time.
Last year, SpaceX launched roughly double payload mass of rest of world.”
There was a tweet saying “Falcon 9's turnaround time has been decreased phenomenally.
As the demand grows, do we expect to see its turnaround time to get much shorter (24hrs)?
Or by the time we reach that kind of demand SpaceX would've transitioned to Starship which
will have ~ >1 hour of turnaround time?”
Musk responded and said “If 2021 manifest is met, SpaceX will do ~75% of total Earth
payload to orbit with Falcon.
A single Starship is designed to do in a day what all rockets on Earth currently do in
a year.
Even so, ~1000 Starships will take ~20 years to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.”
There’s an article about some observations after a recent Starlink launch when people
looked at the Starlink train.
They found an object that wasn’t expected to be seen where it was.
In a nutshell it’s assumed that the Falcon 9 upper stage was still in orbit long after
it should’ve been.
So the data suggests that possibly a recent Starlink mission’s upper stage failed to
deorbit.
There’s a CNBC article about some Starlink testing that SpaceX is planning to do.
It says “‘SpaceX seeks to make minor modifications to its experimental authorization for additional
test activities undertaken with the federal government,’ the company wrote to the FCC
in a filing on Thursday.”
“‘The tests are designed to demonstrate the ability to transmit to and receive information
from (1) two stationary ground sites and (2) one airborne aircraft at one location, and
would add to these (3) limited testing from a moving vehicle on the ground,’ SpaceX
said.”
With those standard SpaceX updates covered, let’s take a look at some Boca Chica stuff.
The SpaceX Boca Chica team recently had a little party with fireworks and music and
Trevor Mahlmann tweeted about it.
Musk said “Celebrating a year of great work by the SpaceX team!”
Mary posted a tweet saying “Tent 3 expansion has begun at SpaceX Boca Chica production
site.”
As SpaceX works on orbital pads at the launch site, some new construction work has been
spotted.
RGV Aerial Photography posted a shot of a recent flyover they did of the area.
They posted a caption saying “The foundation pilings for the launch tower can be seen in
this image taken yesterday!”
At the orbital launch site, a new propellant storage tank was installed.
There was also another tank rotated and put into position.
Here’s the view of the other construction going on in this area.
Here’s the latest view of the orbital launch mount hardware being constructed in the yard.
Work continues at the liquid oxygen propellant production site.
SPadre posted a tweet saying “Things just keep getting better!
Up late last night catching up with my closest friend that just moved down yesterday, he’s
here to build the Starbase launch towers ‘Y’all are gonna flip when you see the size of the
crane we are bringing’.”
For Starship, there was a tweet about the renders that were released with the recent
dearMoon update.
The post said “The new large upper windows as seen in recent DearMoon renders, located
on the Activity Deck.
Question is if they still plan on using Transparent Metal?”
Musk responded with “Transparent aluminum (ALON) might be cool.”
Jack Beyer posted a picture of SN10 performing the landing flip maneuvre with a caption asking
about a green flash.
He said “I'm curious what this green flash is, if it were Falcon 9 the no brainer answer
would be TEA-TEB - but Raptor just uses spark ignitors.
It was visible during engine ignition for SN10's flip maneuver, specifically when the
third and final engine lit.”
Musk responded with “Green flame in this context means engine is burning internal components
made of copper.
This is usually followed by a RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly).”
Jack Beyer also posted a cool video on Twitter of SpaceXers installing the heat shield tiles
by hand.
His caption says “Super cool to see Starship thermal protection tiles applied by hand today.
I wonder how long until this is an automated process.”
There was a new body flap spotted delivered to the production yard.
There’s a new nosecone being worked on in the fabrication tent.
A new barrel section was moved out of another tent.
The GSE-1 upper liquid oxygen dome was spotted outside again.
SpaceX performed multiple tests of SN11 during the week with both an ambient pressure test
and cryo test.
Looking at the Cameron County website for the road and beach closures, they were also
hoping to do a static fire on Friday before the closure was cancelled.
No new dates have been posted yet but I’d expect they’ll be looking to do a static
fire as early as tomorrow.
Michael Baylor posted a tweet about the possibility of a test flight of SN11 as early as next
week.
He said “Starship SN11's test flight is NET (no earlier than) Tuesday, per the latest
Temporary Flight Restrictions.
This requires a fast turnaround time after a good static fire test on Monday.
Probably unlikely to happen, but it's a NET.”
The piece of Super Heavy Booster Number 1 on the heavy duty mount was moved into the
high bay.
They then stacked the lower part of this first booster prototype to form the methane tank.
To finish off our Sunday video as always, we have the latest Starship & Super Heavy
build diagram thanks to Brendan Lewis.
It’s possible with Super Heavy Booster Number 1 almost fully stacked that it’s the next
prototype after SN11 to be tested.
As always, I have to say thanks to Mary, or BocaChicaGal for her non-stop effort and dedication
with filming the awesome Boca Chica stuff.
Also thank you to the NASASpaceflight team that are working behind the scenes on their
great videos, livestreams and other space content.
That’s it for this episode of TheSpaceXShow, I hope you enjoyed the video, if you did,
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Thanks for watching and have a great day!