This video is supported by Squarespace. Hey, Hey Marcus House with you here. We have got
fire again this week my friends and how do you think the new concrete held up? Diving
right into that along with the general updates at Starbase. This incredible little lunar lander
is on its way soon. Yes. Lots to learn about this one to be hurled into space by Falcon 9.
We had CRS-26 sending super critical components to upgrade the international
space station. Orion continues its breathtaking journey as it prepares
to head home. Another packed week, so I’ve picked all that good stuff,
mashed it together into a smooth paste for easy digestion and squirted it right here.
Let’s dive straight into all of the action at the launch site this week. On Sunday evening Mary with
NASASpaceFlight received an overpressure notice for Monday indicating that SpaceX was intending
to perform a static fire for Booster 7 that day. During the weekend the teams had also been hard at
work clearing just about everything from around the orbital launch site. Monday morning rolled
around kicking off with SpaceX performing multiple fire suppression tests. A few hours
later the road closed, the launch site was fully cleared of workers … Aaanndd…. Well, after a good
few hours waiting a few SpaceX workers returned back to the pad. Awesome shot by the way of the
crew walking on the orbital launch mount with the active venting still going on! That was a
tad unusual. Anyway, once they had left venting kicked in for what we assumed would be propellant
loading, but a while later the booster simply depressurised. No more testing for that day.
However that evening another overpressure notice was given for Tuesday. That day of
course was a fun day of action. After quite some time of orbital launch mount venting,
Booster 7 had a quite long depress vent followed by cars returning. Why? Well,
it looked like they had left something over at the orbital launch mount. It can’t have been anything
too problematic because once they moved it away, everything continued to head towards a static
fire with engine chill and venting continuing. Over the course of a little over an hour or so,
the liquid oxygen tank was filled close to the brim, and the methane tank also got a
nice frostline as well. This really looked to be the start of the autogenous pressurisation
static fire that we were informed of a few weeks ago, although it turned out that it was not the 20
second length here in the tweet. Anyway, the fire suppression system activated and… Yes! Yet another
successful static fire of Booster 7! That was about 13 seconds from start to finish, and SpaceX
confirmed soon after that 11 of the 33 Raptor engines were fired in this test. Comparatively
of course the last static fire was 14 engines. What was this though? Another small brush fire,
thankfully it extinguished itself quickly. That wasn’t all the fiery business though as… what we
can see here is assumed to be the insulation on one of the propellant lines catching fire! Well,
that is why we have got a new fire suppression system isn’t it? There we go! The system there
coming in very useful, extinguishing that! Hopefully the rest of the shielding is installed
before the 33 engine static fire though. That's not something that we want to see happening each
time. Anyway, the Raptors seemed to perform beautifully. Hopefully a successful test of
the autogenous pressurization systems. Before long, Booster 7 depressurised and detanked.
Ok, so a good static fire, but I can hear your raised voices here asking about the concrete.
Well, initially we had high hopes that the new FONDAG concrete would hold up a lot
better compared to the old concrete replaced a week ago. Well it did look like it held up
a little better at least. There seemed to be less concrete raining down from the sky… but,
it may not be perfect just yet. In Epic Space Flights footage here we can see that there was
indeed some debris raining down. I think it is probably safe to assume that at least some of
that was coming from the concrete base underneath the pad. It doesn’t look all that bad though,
there’s not huge chunks of the pad missing, I think what we can see here is just some damage
right at the point where the main exhaust might have been hitting the concrete. I will say that
I’m pretty impressed that within two weeks of the previous static fire SpaceX was able to remove the
old concrete, pour the new concrete, and then on top of that, had it cure in such a short period.
Musk also seemed happy with the result, tweeting that it was another small step towards Mars.
Personally as well I just loved seeing the massive oxygen tank of the booster almost completely
frosted over which is something we haven't seen with a static fire before. With it near completely
full the ice on the lower portion of the booster just looks incredible. It’ll definitely be cool to
see a bunch of ice shaking off during the initial liftoff of the orbital flight. I mean, just check
out this incredible shot by Cosmic Perspective. Also linked in the description. On Thursday two
Raptor engines were delivered to the launchsite and this time the old Raptor platform was moved
underneath. Once lifted, the team removed a Raptor Center engine which was swiftly replaced
with Raptor number 158, rising up into the engine section. Soon the platform went back up again to
remove another and this time a Raptor Boost Engine from the outer set of 20 came back down. Again, a
new engine was installed to replace that. Perhaps the old one had some issues with the static fire.
So the booster had quite a busy week didn’t it? And it didn’t stop there. A transport
stand arrived late in the week to prepare for it to come back down. As predicted,
Friday morning up it went, sideways translation and then gently coming down. Why would SpaceX
suddenly do this though? Well, I suspect they want to finalize the shroud installation around
the engines which still hadn’t been fully done, and let’s not forget the orbital launch mount
too. Perhaps that needs a few more tweaks after the data from the recent static fires!
Alright… so over to Ship 24. If you remember last week we talked about its repairs on suborbital pad
B. This of course continued further this week. One good sign was the crew placing back a lot of the
heatshield tiles that had been uncovered for the repairs. It first started off being filled in with
the two upper rows, and later in the week when Starship Gazer was out to fully investigate the
launchsite after the Static Fire, he spotted that the heatshield was nearly fully filled back in.
Over at the buildsite the work continued for the next ship in line. The bridge crane
unhooked from Ship 25 after multiple lifts to install the Raptor Vacuum engines. It
has been in there now for quite some time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this ship has also had
similar structural improvements done to ship 24. Ship 26 is nearing completion with its Nosecone
assembly being moved into the Highbay early in the week. It is getting very busy in here with
both parts of Ship 26 as well as Ship 25! Ship 26 in particular I really want to see
finished. This naked looking vehicle being the first to exclude the flaps since SN6. Bit of a
flashback there that one isn’t it. Looks super wacky as a flying tank there all by itself.
The new tent around the Sanchez area here is coming along quite rapidly,
but it looks like we might not be able to look inside for much longer. This evening
shot from Starship Gazer shows that the support pillars have now been added at both sides.
So yep, it has been a fun week at Starbase as we await the orbital flight tests and
future low mass to orbit opportunities that come with this story. Speaking of which,
please do remember to check out the midweek video that I published early
in the week. That wasn’t published at the regular time here, so do me a favor
and check that one out so that I can keep making these deep dives. The link is below,
and a big welcome to all of the new subscribers that joined up after watching that one as well.
Getting real close to that 450K mark. Hopefully we can get there before the end of the year.
Now, in my opinion, the news of the week is arguably SpaceX’s ispace M1 launch coming
very soon with the Falcon 9 booster 1073 on its fifth flight. Sadly of course it was delayed a
few times this week, but it is going to fly soon. As a quick side note, this one is actually going
to be converted to a Falcon Heavy side booster at some point next year I believe. Why is this
mission so interesting you may ask? Well, this mission is carrying the Hakuto-R M1 lunar lander
for Japanese company ispace. Making them the first private Japanese mission that aims to land on the
moon. Along with that, there is also the Lunar Flashlight CubeSat for NASA that will ride along.
Because these payloads are so light, this mission actually gets to perform a full return to landing
site to touch down at LZ-1. This is a great shot of the little unit inside the fairings
shared early in the week just to put the size of this into some sort of perspective for you.
I always love these landing zone missions as we get to see the incredible uninterrupted footage
as the booster falls back to earth. That is something that we don’t see a great deal these
days. The last core booster to land excluding any Falcon Heavy side boosters was the Transporter
5 mission. Always super exciting to watch! Using ispace’s beautiful infographic here, the
plan is laid out nicely. So what is the objective? Well, I’ll dive into that in a second,
real quick though… huge thanks to Squarespace for supporting today's video. They give you the
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Ok, so what is the goal for this mission? Well M1 stands for “Mission 1”, a tech demonstration which
aims to verify that the design of the lander will work as expected. If successful, the next missions
will contribute to NASA’s Artemis Program. The lander itself, built in Germany, has a leg span of
2.6 meters. A few humans here for scale as we can see them integrating the landing gear. The entire
vehicle weighs in at 340 kilograms when empty. It is stated to be able to carry up to 30 kilograms,
and the landing location on the moon's surface for this little unit is Atlas Crater. It really is an
intricate little unit. A main thruster here provides the core power to descend and land,
but then these tiny little thrusters also assist with those main burns and the stability as well,
along with of course reaction thrusters to provide precise attitude control. A very
nice little animation here of the full range of control options that they actually have. It is
pretty darn cool isn’t it! Between 1 and 2 days into the mission, they will perform the first
orbital control maneuver and following that, over the course of 4.5 months, there will be
a massive range of tests including reaching lunar orbit, and obviously a landing on the surface as
well. So we’ll need to wait until April to see the result of this. If all goes well, this paves the
way nicely for mission 2 in 2024. That by the way aims to deploy a rover. Following missions then
aim to establish a rapid cost effective platform to transport many payloads to the surface, so it
is going to be very exciting to see how this first test mission works. Hopefully we’ll be reporting
on a successful touchdown in a few months. Along with this payload SpaceX will also
deploy the Lunar Flashlight satellite for NASA. That was originally supposed to fly on Artemis 1,
but due to propulsion issues, it couldn’t get integrated in time. This little unit is
about the size of a briefcase as stated here and it is going to fly within 15 kilometers
above the lunar South Pole. Its goal is to use lasers to search for water ice in permanently
shadowed craters. Lots more information on the article here linked in the description.
In last week's episode I briefly also touched on the lead up to SpaceX cargo dragon mission CRS26,
set for launch later that day from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Liftoff went as
expected, taking the shiny new dragon capsule to space on it's very first flight. Some great views
here of the uphill climb, and Greg Scott picking up some spectacular views from the ground on this
terrific clear day. And there we have it, stage separation and then minutes later the landing
on the drone ship “Just read the instructions”. Now after second engine cutoff we had some great
unique views of the unpressurised trunk of Dragon here. First you can see the new set of roll out
solar arrays to be installed. And secondly, this highly sped up unique shot of the nose
cone opening up. The camera here showing dragon exposing the docking instruments to space as the
chase down of the International Space Station began. After passing the usual hold waypoints
Dragon proceeded towards the docking in total darkness here, giving some very nice views of
the thrusters firing. Once it was securely docked to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony
module an interesting command was heard during the webcast. The crew were now cleared to resume their
exercising. That is something you may not realize. Exercising is prohibited during docking operations
to reduce vibration on the station. So yes, making up the 3,528 kilograms of cargo was food,
equipment, and of course science experiments. As mentioned in last week’s video, I’m interested
in the Veg 05 experiment. They will attempt to grow dwarf tomatoes using different light
spectrums to see how each affects growth, flavor and overall nutrition. It is all about being able
to in the future supplement the pre packaged food with fresh produce. A very important goal
if we truly want to be self-sufficient on a journey to Mars. This Cargo Dragon is going
to remain at the station for about 45 days. That is a little longer than usual and it’ll
give plenty of time to install those solar arrays and conduct these critical science experiments.
Now we are just over 2 weeks into the Artemis 1 mission and the Orion capsule's unique orbital
journey. Picking up where we left off last Saturday, Orion entered the Distant
Retrograde Orbit around the moon. And that same day it passed the previous Apollo 13 record of
400,171 kilometers from earth. By Monday 28th, it had reached its peak distance of almost 435,000
kilometers (270,000 miles) away. Just look at that shot there. The moon appearing almost the
same size as the earth. That is of course because it was much closer to the moon than
the earth at the time. The engineers continued to test out multiple systems
onboard including the star tracker and inertial measurement units which make up the guidance,
navigation and control for Orion. Also custom PC builders rejoice because Orion is fully decked out
with RGB lighting as demonstrated this week. Jim here sharing a test of Callisto, a digital voice
assistant in the vehicle. “Open the Pod bay doors, please, Callisto!” . Ah, forget it. Anyway, at the
time this week's episode goes live, Orion closes in on the moon, preparing to slingshot around
once again before heading for home to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, December 11th.
So that was the main news of the week but one that is a little closer to home here in just a second.
A few quick housekeeping things. Please again, watch out for spam in the comments. I am not
requesting anyone to pay for delivery of some bogus prize. This is happening now on so many
channels and I’m seeing it all the time. Also, I’ve had quite a few comments asking
how to get different merch designs like this sized down. Something you may not actually
realize is that you can customize merch with any of my designs on the spreadshop interface
here. You can even apply multiple designs if you are after something quite specific.
Now, I think it is important to mention this one. A milestone date in Australia's space launch
history. Yes. Believe it or not we actually had one. Earlier this week marked the 55th anniversary
of the land down under becoming the third nation to design and launch its own satellite to orbit,
after of course the United States and the USSR. This was November 29th 1967,
a 3 stage modified Redstone rocket from project Sparta was launched from Woomera,
South Australia. This location was originally founded way back in 1947 as a weapons development
and testing facility. And the payload was the Weapons Research Establishment SATellite or
WRESAT for short. All designed, built and launched in just 11 months, it completed 642 laps around
earth before re-entering on January 10th 1968, just west of Ireland. I saw this tweet in the
week and it reminded me that Australia had a quite large part of the upcoming space launch industry.
It was a great example of our international cooperation from the US Department of Defence,
NASA, and the UK's Ministry of Technology. And sadly since then though it's also a
shining example of political short sightedness on Australia's part. The space launch industry
here all but disappeared by 1980. Now don’t get me wrong, outside actual rocket launches,
Australia's support for the deep space network has been extremely beneficial,
probably best known for capturing the TV signals of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon, but
our launch industry never really went any further. That is until the more recent announcement of the
Australian Space Agency in 2017. Now, with the private sector helping to pave the way,
there is finally activity with Southern Launch constructing their coastal launch site at Whaler’s
Way in South Australia. They plan to offer sub orbital, Sun Synchronous and Polar orbit options.
There’s another rocket range further north at Koonibba, still in South Australia. Then way
over on the East coast in Queensland is Gilmour Space making great progress towards their first
launch. Thankfully it seems we are attempting to kick off the start of a new Australian space
launch industry, albeit many decades overdue. Thanks for sticking around to the end of the
video. And thanks especially to all you incredible Patrons and youtube members for helping us out
each and every week. Videos like our special mid week deep dive that we released the other day just
doesn't happen without you, so thanks a bunch. If you haven’t seen it, please do check it out,
it is right here. Enjoy your weekends my friends. I’ll catch you for the next video.