this video is sponsored by brilliant hey hey marcus house with you here and mad construction
continues at spacex's starbase the drive for the near orbital flight is clear with sn15 now with no
chance of a reflight we have a lot of information on the super heavy plumbing and development that
will blow your mind another starlink launch and protests of the network by via set to the fcc and
virgin galactic celebrated a third successful suborbital flight test this week as well
every single week we start off by talking about the development of the largest and most
powerful rocket ever created the starship and super heavy stacked vessel in development right
now collectively just known as starship is spacex's game changer the story of falcon 9
has been incredible so far with its iconic booster landings that have amazed the world
but this next vehicle being prototyped right now aims to be the first fully reusable transportation
system and it aims to be able to carry over 100 metric tons at a time into low earth orbit and
beyond if successful this changes the game entirely so it's not hard to see why this
story has amassed the following that it has you and many others like you have changed our world
here tuning in every saturday to get up-to-date information on this and other space news and we'd
love exploring these topics with you this week has been exciting spacex has begun the process of
stacking what could become the first super heavy booster capable of supporting orbital starship
test flights the entire community is absolutely pumped by this as shown right here by alex svan in
his incredible new starship reentry video starship number 20 could very well be the first starship to
streak through the sky just like this by far the largest controlled vehicle to ever do so
the forces of re-entry and the for forward and rear fin controls will be pushed to the extreme in
this test the big question is how successful can the re-entry be in the first attempt will it hold
up to the searing re-entry forces time is going to tell here and thank you so much there to alex
for creating this masterpiece the link to the full quality video with the audio is in the description
and there will be much more dropping on twitter from alex there very soon i'm sure the booster
for this first mission is booster number three or as it's more commonly known bn3 numerous
sections have already been spotted at spacex's starbase facility over the last six weeks or so
and a substantial portion of that has now been stacked including the common
dome on the top of the upper sections of the liquid oxygen tank this is now standing at 16
rings high and we expect the full super heavy booster to be around 38 rings tall once done
spacex has also mostly completed bn3's engine section including a thrust dome with plumbing
cutouts for a full 28 or 29 raptor engine set now last week we touched on a few initial renders by
casper stanley well he has remained busy over the last week and we now have this animation to
share with you with a little bit of new plumbing information and assumptions the entire full set
of main lines has been added to the model both for the liquid methane and the liquid oxygen each one
of the wrapped engines is designed to have around two mega newtons of thrust that is a tad over 200
metric tons of force pushing upwards into the thrust plate for one engine multiply that by
the 28 or 29 wrapped engines that will be mounted to the bottom of the super heavy and we have now
well over 5 500 metric tons of force that will lift the colossal starship and super heavy stack
into the air now that is going to take a monstrous amount of fuel and oxidizer to be pumped through
all of that plumbing just look at this here assuming 28 engines that is 56 connections to feed
all of those colossal beasts and don't even get us started on the autogenous pressurization lines
that needs to also be run on top of all of this that is going to be crazy stuff as you can see
here the blue liquid oxygen lines are wider in diameter as this is the same ratio that we see
for the tanks the raptors of course consume much more liquid oxygen than methane there has been
confusion lately in the common threads from people believing that the liquid methane is the tank
at the bottom now that was the case for the booster number one prototype and earlier this
year it had been stacked to the full 70 meter height interestingly though major design changes
such as reversing the tank order meant that it became more of a manufacturing pathfinder this was
clarified again this week by elon musk the liquid oxygen is three and a half times heavier than the
liquid methane so it makes total sense to have it on the bottom this is why all of these blue
pipes in the animation are placed at the bottom of the tank here now we're unsure if these lines
need to reach right down to the bottom of the tank like this or not because on booster landing only
the central engines will essentially be active so it could be that these extensions are not needed
the bottom attachment to the downcomer for the liquid methane was spotted by mary last week here
and it gave a lot of great insight in how the flow would be divided that is how casper has managed to
so beautifully illustrate a possible set of green lines that run from the many connections we see
here these early shots are the best clues that we get in understanding how this complex area of the
super heavy will be developed we love it and we certainly love the work of stanley creative here
as well if you're not following casper on both twitter and youtube do yourself a favor and fix
that right now because there is a lot more of this work coming your support of the community
here always goes a long way and as we see booster number three evolve into what we hope becomes the
first booster to take flight this 3d work is going to become reality very soon now we've also seen
booster number two parts spotted all signs still appear to indicate that this will be turned into
a small test tank to qualify super heavy's complex and unproven thrust dome understandably spacex are
going to want to do various pressure and cryogenic tests to ensure that it can handle all the insane
forces that those raptor engines will throw at it over the last few weeks a new mystery structure
has been taking shape that i think relates to this for previous starship tests we've seen
spacex use these thrust ram structures to simulate the raptor forces on the thrust domes but how are
they going to test such a thing with this huge super heavy dome rgv captured an interesting
structure right here just check this out this looks to be part of a super heavy thrust ram
for the eight inner circle of raptors and then a potential ninth thrust ram right there in the
center if this is indeed a ninth ram this somewhat confirms the previous speculation
that there is a 29th raptor engine in the very center of the thrust dome surrounded by the inner
circle of 8 and then an outer circle of 20. by using this structure as a 9 meter wide guide
this mystery structure looks to be a good size for the inner circle of super heavy raptors
now starship number 15 which was the first full scale prototype with fin controls to successfully
fly and land had its flight three weeks ago early in the week this incredible vessel underwent
fin testing now we're unsure why they were doing this perhaps simply verifying that there was no
damage and that these systems would be okay again for further flights elon musk had raised the idea
of a potential brief flight shortly after its landing however that is now not the case the
main concern is that another test of the same vehicle would cause delays to the orbital launch
site construction which is now the central focus of the star based team instead we saw
a self-propelled modular transporter moved to the launch site on monday the 24th of may on tuesday
afternoon the new lr11000 crane was connected to sn15 to lift the vehicle off the launch stand and
onto the transporter it is now expected that sn15 is to be moved to a display stand and turned into
a monument now personally i'd love it to remain around for this purpose so i like this idea as it
was the first to completely stick the landing and survive i think that it's quite a fitting end for
that prototype instead of being potentially lost in another flight attempt i think it's fair to say
that another flight as well may not really have added a great deal more value to spacex anyway
while we are on the subject of the orbital launch site an elevator was lifted and installed
for workers to ascend the orbital launch integration tower this is going to be very handy
as the tower is stacked into the sky around midday on monday the massive lr11 350 crawler crane
picked up this jig which was then used to lift the second section of the integration tower on top
of the base segment already there just a few days later on friday the 28th up went the third
section this tower is going to rise into the sky very quickly so what has been going on with the
tank building this week we had starship gazer on twitter spotting this section here initially
thought to be sn21's common dome due to a label on the side however shortly after bokeh chicago
with nasa spaceflight captured a higher quality view of this label on the dome and interestingly
it can be seen that the writing sn21 common was crossed out and replaced with gse5 forward
implying that a once sn21 section has since been reassigned to the fifth ground service equipment
tank for the orbital tank farm thanks as always mary for having that continual and incredible
knack for being in the right place at the right time so yes this further implies that spacex's
main focus at the moment is that first orbital flight attempt which includes manufacturing all
gse tanks for the orbital launch site instead of focusing on vehicles beyond starship 20 and
booster number three regarding those gse tanks brendan lewis has begun posting diagrams for the
status of each of these from this we can see that gse 1 and 2 are already at the orbital
launch pad and are actually two rings taller than the tank 3 and 4. gse tank 3 stacking has already
been completed and it's awaiting its move to the launch site whereas gse tank 4 is still in the mid
bay in two sections with its aft dome to be mated lastly is gse tank five which has three sections
so far with the placement of each scene here it's believed that another two of these tanks will be
built and transported to bring the total to seven and then we have the eighth larger water tank here
which will complete the fuel farm we should also see the first cryo shell structure to be put into
action soon too as this was moved around the same time as the stacking of the third tower
section now right next to those gse tanks we have new updates courtesy of rgv aerial photography
again that brilliant work by marucio that you the community generously support has led us to see the
bigger picture these foundations that we touched on last week are actually to mount these heat
exchangers as shown here in the 3d model by obl these foundations on the opposite side are still
being set but we are thinking that there could be up to eight of these heat exchangers to be
installed in total there has just been so much to cover at starbase and there is plenty more to come
this week on wednesday the 26th of may we also had another falcon 9 launch with the next set of
starling satellites this was the second flight of booster 1063 with the first flight being the
sentinel 6 mission last november we didn't get to see that uninterrupted landing footage as we did
with the previous mission but all the same the 85th successful landing on the drone ship just
read the instruction was made right here we then saw another set of 60 styling satellites released
which interestingly finishes off that first orbital shell once this final set is in place
that should allow spacex to provide service for around eighty percent of the world i believe
the current plan is for there to be another four separate shells which should begin to
gradually increase performance and coverage as the entire network keeps rolling out
now speaking of starlink it was reported just days ago that the satellite operator viasat has
made requests to the fcc asking them to deny spacex from launching further styling missions
the reason is because they would like a new environmental review done the fcc had already
given the green light a long time back approving close to four and a half thousand satellites that
constellation plan requested one thousand five hundred and eighty four satellites to be placed at
a 550 kilometer altitude the remainder originally would then be placed in higher orbits between 1
100 kilometers and 1 300 kilometers here is the thing though just last month in april 2021 the fcc
also approved the request by spacex to modify that license wanting to instead take all of
the satellites originally planned for the higher orbits and placing them in a similar
550 kilometer orbit as well as far as we know right now the fcc has pretty much dismissed this
appeal already saying that i'm sure that we haven't heard the last about these appeals
now viasat is in the process of rolling out their viasat 3 project which will be at the much higher
altitude in geostationary orbit which is close to 36 000 kilometers in altitude the big reason
that the idea of starlink is a game changer is precisely due to the much lower communication
time so spacex has a massive advantage with the constellation at this lower 550 kilometer altitude
in fact viasat is currently targeting the first of the three to launch in early 2022 and then it will
take at least several more months for testing and placing it into full service interestingly one of
the launches is still planned i think for a falcon heavy mission with the other two being launched by
ariane space and united launch alliance i think the main issue here is that by the time the first
viasat satellite is in service starlings network will be serving many countries of the world with a
comparatively much lower latency just as a side note here as well for those that are not aware
jim bridenstine who was of course nasa's previous administrator has since joined the board of
directors at vyasat and he has previously voiced his own concerns about the sustainability of mega
constellations such as starlink so it's certainly going to be interesting to see if these protests
go much further virgin galactic celebrated a third successful suborbital test flight this past week
on may the 22nd we'll talk more about that in a second but first a massive thank you to brilliant
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marcus house the first 200 people will get 20 off the first year of brilliant premium the link
is in the description below so yes virgin galactic has just had its third successful sub-orbital test
taking off from its new home at spaceport america in new mexico vss unity was carried aloft by eve
it's custom-built carrier aircraft once at its designated altitude unity was released
with its two crew members now accelerating away at a blistering speed reaching over three and a
half times the speed of sound pulling roughly 3.5 g's in the process some spectacular views
on ascent here with the engine shut down just over a minute later then silence and time to just take
it all in unity continued upwards to its apogee of 55.45 miles or just
over 88 kilometers and that is enough for the crew to earn their commercial astronaut wings
the federal aviation administration recognises flights above 50 miles or 80 kilometers for crew
of privately funded spacecraft with such an award these different astronaut wings awarded by nasa
follow the internationally accepted altitude of 62 miles or 100 kilometers which is one of the next
targets for virgin galactic certainly a unique experience here but one that comes with a quarter
of a million dollar price tag for now not quite the bulk space tourism for everybody at present
but perhaps one day with more spacecraft the price will come down with this quick trip it was time to
head for home and a safe landing back at spaceport america so what's next for 2021 for virgin
galactic if things continue to go to plan the next flight will be with four employees this time
testing interior features of the cabin following that a trip with sir richard branson is going to
occur so no pressure there for the crew just to round the year out the italian space force have
kicked in two million dollars to send some payload specialists along for microgravity research that
will have to be some very quick testing there so yes what do you think of the whole space tourism
scene and suborbital flights let me know what you think below soon we may well see blue origin join
in with their paying customers it certainly makes for interesting times in the new era of commercial
space travel so there we go you are all caught up for the week if you have a second to help support
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