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Hey, Hey Marcus House with you here. This week at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas
has been yet another interesting one, and also some pretty positive signs of progress
with Raptor 2. More astounding footage to check out here. The James Webb Space Telescope parks
itself successfully up at Lagrange Point 2. Could NASA be lacking the personnel required for their
next giant leap? And small rocket providers continue to soar. We have a lot to cover today.
As always we are catching up on the progress and interesting insights into SpaceX’s development
at Starbase in Texas. There has been a load to catch up on this past week,
but just quickly to those that may have never visited here or are unfamiliar with the subject,
this colossal beast is Starship, the second stage of Elon Musk's
gigantic fully reusable rocket. The much larger first stage booster beside it towers almost
70 metres tall alone. Both of these are 9 metres wide, and to provide a real sense of scale,
you’ve only got to look at the vehicles from these recent shots by RGV Aerial Photography.
This rocket is a monster and it will be the largest and the most powerful single rocket
stage to ever launch. Added to this, the goal of this being the first fully reusable rocket,
we really are watching history unfold here. We have some very interesting updates this week
on the production and testing of the new Raptor Version 2 engines that will power the future
vehicles. Thanks to images released by Gary Blair of NasaSpaceFlight, we can see several Raptor 2
engines are being tested and static fired at SpaceX’s test centre in McGregor, ahead of
being shipped to Starbase to be tested and used on future vehicles. Including we believe Booster 7.
Raptor 2's are currently being assembled at the Hawthorne factory in California which is around
2,200 kilometers as the crow flies from Starbase in Texas. However, efforts are already underway
to centralise production and testing of Raptor 2 at the McGregor test site. Due to this, those
Raptors will avoid a time consuming and expensive trip from California to McGregor and will instead
only have to travel a relatively short distance. Beautiful footage and audio quality here by Adam
Cuker. Thanks for being down there capturing the action. Show him some love from the direct link in
the description. There are a lot more tests to capture as production ramps up I’m sure.
This week Owe released a reconstruction of the flight data from Elon Musk’s Starship Booster
simulation, and it includes a handy explanation of what the 3 graphs in Elon Musks tweeted simulation
mean. The top graph shows the acceleration values in metres per second. The middle graph is the
degrees per second rate values of roll, pitch, and yaw, and the bottom graph shows the altitude value
in kilometres. He also was able to create his own render of the booster landing sequence
simulation thanks to Chris here, who meticulously extracted the charts into usable Excel data,
and Aeneas, who transformed the vehicle data into positioning data. We see 9 Raptors firing
up at about 1,700 metres to rapidly slow the vehicle down from close to the speed of sound.
At around 800 metres above the ground 6 Raptors are shut down to leave just 3 firing. Finally,
just before wiping off all velocity and the final grab by the tower arms, 2 Raptors are shut down
to leave just 1 firing until the pins fall into place and the booster is caught. Now regarding
the mechazilla catching system, you might ask how SpaceX will land the Booster with such precision
and at the proper rotation so that the catching pins connect to the arms. Well, if the booster
is coming in too far forward or backward, there isn't an issue as the tank treads on the arms
can just bring the booster back to the intended position in line with the mount. Likewise if the
booster is coming in too much to the left or right then the arms can move to compensate for that. BUT
if the booster is coming down on an angle in the roll orientation not exactly parallel to the arms,
the arms can't compensate so what would be the outcome? Luckily SpaceX has 2 ways of ensuring
the roll. Firstly, the grid fins are great to control roll. But once the Booster is too slow,
not enough lift is generated to have them do the work. Here, the fact that 3 engines burn nearly
to the end ensures the final roll control. That will be mind blowing if it all works as simulated.
In the last video a week ago, Ship 20 was just about to be moved, and it did
soon after. It was lifted up off pad B and placed onto the transport stand. From here, it was simply
rolled over to the orbital launch site with the Self Propelled Modular Transporter, destined for
the staging pad next to the orbital tank farm. The staging pads allow the propellant delivery
system to be used for cryo testing a booster and starship. Now, if you want more info about this
check out Zack Golden’s explanation about how these staging pads work and why an additional
cryo test of ship 20, even after completing back to back static fires may be a critical
step in commissioning the orbital Launch tower. We are thinking that a Booster 4 lift onto the
launch mount performed by the Chopsticks is quite imminent, however there may be
some signs that SpaceX will be performing additional load tests on Mechazilla beforehand.
Labpadre captured a delivery of more water sacks arriving at the Launch Complex on Tuesday.
It is unclear if these are the same ones from the initial tests or if we are possibly looking
at a load simulation test that exceeds the previous tests that we saw a few weeks ago.
As seen on Labpadre’s Rover2 camera during the week, the SpaceX team in the lifts were incredibly
busy completing punch list items all over the Mechazilla structure. In another angle from
Nic with NASASpaceFlight you can see the amount of attention these rails have been receiving.
Over at the build site and due to many months of no updates on Ship 22, we believed that there was
a possibility that it was destined for the scrap yard. However we now know that SpaceX does indeed
have plans to complete the vehicle with the aft section being moved into the mid bay last weekend
which was soon integrated with the rest of the tank section.
In the Highbay, Booster 7’s methane tank section was stacked on a four ring section,
the last section of that tank, meaning that the whole methane tank is now 13 out of 13 rings tall.
This leaves Booster 7 with just two stacks to go: The thrust section,
and final stacking! Additionally there's now more news on future boosters. Booster 8’s
forward dome was placed onto the sleeving stand and its 3 ring high forward sleeve
was flipped to the correct orientation. Soon after, that forward dome was sleeved as well.
Nic again captured the new smooth nose cone out in front of the low bay. Is this just a
pathfinder though? Or could it be used on Ship 22 or even a future vehicle. That we don’t yet know.
At the Sanchez Site where the B2.1 Test Tank underwent stress testing in the so-called
can crusher mechanism, this week, it has since been lifted off the test stand. This event offered
an excellent opportunity to look at several features of the starship and booster closer
than we ever have before thanks to RGV Aerial Photography. Looking closely we can see the
20 mount points for the Raptor Boost engines, along with a rare glance at the Vacuum Raptor
Engine mounting points. Looking closely we can see the Raptor Vacuum engine mount points as
well. Notice that all but one of the engine ports appear to be plugged off. We can even see this
connection made directly to one of the RVacs mounts which is a detail we have never seen.
Last week we were looking into the progress made on the cargo door pathfinder as captured by Mary
with NASASpaceFlight. This area of the ship would essentially be between the top of the nose with
both header tanks, and the top of the main liquid methane tank. The main payload bay here would
contain anything that SpaceX would need to deploy. Just a reminder as well, that SpaceX will have a
number of versions of the Starship we believe. One for crew and cargo, and one with a much more
simplified massive payload delivery system like a massive block of Starlink version 2 satellites. So
with the limited shot here, it looked to me as if this was a sliding latch mechanism that would move
upward to lock. I had thought at the time that the other side of this would be a hinge of some sort
however… ehh… that doesn’t seem to be the case. The side of this that was hidden from camera we
believe has the same hook and slide structure. It was rumoured a while back that SpaceX would
be considering a cargo bay door system a little similar to the Space shuttle which had the two
massive payload bay doors hinged on either side. Before that, the chomper seemed to be the way to
go. Much of this was all prior to the header tanks being moved up into the nose in the design though.
Instead, we may well have something a little more like this as animated beautifully by Ryan Hansen
Space. The entire door may move to unlock, and then flip out, allowing the huge opening to deploy
the payloads. This is still speculative of course just to be clear, but I’d love to know what you
think about this. The issue with the entire door swinging downward which seems to be plausible for
this prototype, is that you have this massive obstruction when trying to load things into it.
Starship is not designed to be laid down. It needs to be loaded while standing. I asked
Elon this on Twitter and he replied back saying that, indeed, this is currently a matter of much
internal debate. Based on that, expect to see this design concept changing.
Thanks to you all for supporting what Ryan does here on Twitter and Youtube. If you missed it last
week as well, be sure to check out his beautiful lift animation of booster 4 being stacked onto the
launch table with the Mechazilla arms. Just astounding attention to detail here that is
hopefully soon very accurate to reality. Ryan has his Patreon set up now if you want to help him out
there, and the links to those full videos are the description. Do subscribe to help him out there if
you aren't already, and of course if you love all this information and all the material I cover each
Saturday, that really helps the team and I here as well. Thank you for supporting what we all do.
More terrific news on the James Webb Space Telescope mission.
Currently calling Lagrange Point 2 home are ESA’s Gaia, which measures the distances to the stars,
and the X-ray observatory Spektr-RG. On Monday, January 24, the James Webb Space Telescope
performed its third Mid-Course correction burn and injected itself into its operational orbit
around Lagrange point 2, over 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth. Why such a long
distance you might ask? Well, unlike Hubble which observes the universe primarily in ultraviolet
and visible light, the Webb telescope will observe distant Infrared wavelengths
coming from faaar away. We’re talking billions of lightyears. In fact that’s the reason why its
mirrors are gold-plated since it is a highly reflective material for such frequencies.
Now we’ve talked a lot about the lagrange points in previous videos so if you want to know
a lot more about the telescope there is a link in the description to that. It is extremely exciting
for the space enthusiasts watching this enter its final location at Lagrange Point 2. During
the upcoming 5 months commissioning phase, the teams will continue to bring the telescope online
and slowly test its various systems while also aligning its extremely complex primary mirror.
A mirror system that is certainly one of the most complex systems ever flown into space. It consists
of 18 individual mirrors that need to be aligned with each other. That couldn’t be done before
the launch due to how the telescope needed to be folded to fit inside the payload fairing. Assuming
we see no delays during the commissioning phase, we can expect the first images from the James Webb
Space Telescope mid this year and I can not wait to see them. Huge congratulations to the teams at
NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency for such a flawless mission so far.
February is almost upon us and with that so is the much anticipated rollout of Artemis I
to Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Centre. It is anticipated that the wet dress rehearsal
will be sometime around Mid February. This is where a demonstration fueling and countdown are
carried out. We recently saw confirmation of a successful countdown sequencing test
so things look ok so far. There are currently 2 launch window opportunities. Launching in March
would need to happen between the 12th and 27th. The next opportunity in April would need to occur
between the 8th and 23rd. A number of factors determine exactly when, including a requirement
for the uncrewed Orion capsule to splashdown in daylight hours. While there are hopes of launching
in the first quarter of this year, a lot has to go right over the next few weeks. Any issues
detected during the wet dress rehearsal could setback the launch date even further into 2022.
So yes, while hopes are high for a launch soon, there are also potential issues on the horizon
once they attain flight accreditation and look to the first crewed Artemis mission. An Office
of Inspector General report released this month has highlighted several areas of concern not least
of which are likely human resourcing issues. I have provided a link below to the report for you.
With the International Space Station being provided with reliable crew rotations, what about
when crewed Artemis missions commence? The Artemis program will add extra demand for a new calibre of
trained astronauts with a different set of skills required. At one point, NASA's astronaut corp had
some 150 astronauts. Now it is languishing in numbers, especially since the end of the
Shuttle program, with the astronaut corps being so depleted it is comparable to levels not seen since
roughly twenty years ago, now sitting at just 44 active astronauts. This is indeed a concern.
NASA currently determines it's required quantity or “sizing” of astronauts based on the current
needs of the International Space Station. As we see here in this chart, historically, numbers
do vary depending on operational and mission requirements. Back in 2019 a "sizing" review was
conducted and even then, it was projected that the number of required personnel in the Astronaut Corp
would fall below mission demands in 2022\23. A subsequent new intake of astronauts resulted,
the class of 2021, consisting of six men and four women. The problem is, by the time they graduate,
NASA will already be dealing with natural loss of active personnel to things such as retirement,
crew reassignment, or the need to fill ground based leadership and other key roles within NASA
itself. If NASA had to make sudden changes to crew "teams" as a result, this would be quite
unsettling for the astronauts and potentially lead to mission delays or worse. Interestingly,
the inbuilt "safety margin" for staff numbers surplus to requirements, used to sit at 25% prior
to 2014. Somewhere along the line this dropped to 15% and yet no one in the organisation knows
why thanks to a lack of official documentation. NASA has accepted that this reduced safety margin
percentage needs to be reviewed along with other recommendations in the report. Around 2024 and 25
the Artemis missions will hopefully be underway. However, no astronauts have been selected,
the specialised training required has not been defined or put in place. This logically implies
that the timeline for Artemis crewed missions to the moon could also slip - not only because
of the vehicle or the space suits, but a lack of crew. Strangely the report did not recommend
NASA boost their depleted Astronaut Corp numbers beyond the current new intake late in 2021.
Some pretty nice updates here from Rocket Lab and Astra to touch on quickly as well but first,
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So we had Rocket Lab share some great footage early in the week of their recovery team
running some capture tests with the helicopter. That is all in preparation for the future catch
of the very first Electron Rocket first stage. Since they announced that they were going to
attempt to recover and reuse boosters it has been exciting seeing them go through the various tests.
As announced here, they plan to catch Electron out of the sky. It will reenter the atmosphere
and slow down to the point it can deploy its chute. From there the helicopter hooks it,
and they can transport it back to base. Hopefully we’ll see this on a real mission sometime in 2022,
so keep your eye out for updates on that. Always exciting seeing any steps toward
reusability to lower the cost of access to space. Just a quick mention on Astra Space here as well.
It was December 6th 2021 when Astra Space made the announcement that it would launch its first
satellite to earth orbit for NASA. Having followed developments at Astra Space for some time now
what was even better was to hear it would be from Cape Canaveral. Well here we are now at Space
Launch Complex 46 and a recent successful Static fire completed. All that remains now is the tick
of approval from the FAA. It is anticipated that launch will be around early February.
So yes, it has been quite an eventful week of news once again and thanks for coming back to check out
all the updates with me here. No way can I run a channel without people like yourself watching all
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you are all incredible. I’m so honored to have you generously helping support what I do.
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We have the video in the bottom left here that leads to last weeks episode if you
missed that one. In the top right, my latest video and in the bottom right,
a Youtube Recommended video. Have an amazing week, I’ll see you all in the next video.