What? Why?
My name is Felix, and I’m your host for today's episode of What about it.
“Houston, Tranquillity Base here.
The Eagle has landed.”
Those were the words of Neil Armstrong when he gave humanity some exceptional news 53 years ago.
Now companies like SpaceX are working to give you the next exceptional news.
Stay tuned, and let’s dive right in!
Starship Updates
SpaceX is building Starships, and they’ve been very busy with the final steps towards the inaugural orbital launch.
And, of course, there are a few unexpected things we need to discuss but more on that later.
It’s crunch time at Starbase. SpaceX’s development speed is fast anyway, but it just feels that extra bit faster right now.
The goal is nothing less than launching the largest rocket ever built into space,
and there are a few final steps left before that first attempt can take place.
This, for example. It’s the OLM or orbital launch mount.
A very unique launch pad design hopefully capable of launching a full stack Starship.
And you noticed my wording there.
Hopefully. All the ground equipment SpaceX has built here over the past 3 years has never actually launched a Starship into space.
And the latest addition? Heavy shielding surrounds the whole outside of the pad.
These are some pictures from Chief’s WAI Cam from February 10th.
They show the shield segments in detail before they were mounted.
The angled side is facing upwards when installed.
Compare the outward-facing panel with the upward-facing one, and you’ll know what the OLM will need to withstand come launch day.
That’s at least 5 or 6 centimeters of solid steel.
SpaceX workers also finished their tasks on the HPUs or Hydraulic Pressure Units.
Those are used to control the fluid pressure inside the hydraulic system for engine gimballing or thrust vector control.
And even though they’ve never seen a flight yet, they’re already obsolete.
Everything beyond Booster 7 will use electric thrust vector controls.
A perfect example of SpaceX outpacing its own prototypes.
One could argue that this is a bad thing, as some stuff is never tested.
On the other hand, though, this is a nice problem to have.
Imagine you’re developing the largest rocket in human history, and your development team is outpacing the prototype testing team.
Fun times!
The job of improving the OLM is almost done now.
One or two panels are still missing, likely just because there’s some work left to do before sealing the ring completely.
This view is from March 10th.
On March 10th, the SpaceX Pad crew lifted Booster 7 of the orbital launch mount.
There were some speculations going around if this meant a rollback to the construction site for Booster 7. This is likely just because we’re used
to it. Roll out, test, roll back.
We’ve seen this for more than a year now.
It doesn’t seem like booster 7 needs any more work before the launch, though.
Times are changing at Starbase.
Elon Musk recently spoke at a Morgan Stanley Conference.
And even though his talk was about all sorts of things, he also had a few minutes to talk about Starship.
We’re getting close to our first orbital attempt with Starship.
Hopefully, in the next month or so.
"We are getting for the first launch of Starship.
This is a very difficult program.
The rocket is roughly two and a half times the thrust of the Saturn V.
If it once reach orbit it will be by far the biggest rocket to reach orbit.
But more importantly it is designed to be the first fully resusable rocket, orbital rocket, ever.
So that's the key to extending life beyond Earth - a fully and rapidly reusable orbital rocket."
I’m not saying it’ll get to orbit, but I guarantee excitement.
He added his estimate of a 50% chance of actually reaching orbit, an 80% chance of reaching orbit this year,
and a couple of years for reaching full and rapid reusability.
"We're getting close for our first orbital attempt of Starship hopefully in the next month or so.
We'll have our first attempt. I'm not saying we will get to orbit, but I'm guaranteeing excitement.
I think it's got - I don't know -
hopefully above 50% of chance of reaching orbit and then we've got .. we're building a series of Starships in South Texas,
and so I think we've got, hopefully about 80% chance of reaching orbit this year.
It'll probably take us a couple of more years to achieve full and rapid reusability, which I cannot emphasize enough:
it is the profound breakthrough that that is needed to extend life beyond Earth.
It lowers the cost of access to space by orders of magnitude.
And I think that's one of the Great Filters that any civilization has to pass through.
Which is, does the civilization become a multiplanetary or not.
This is one of the elements of the Fermi Paradox."
He emphasized that this is the most profound breakthrough needed to extend life beyond Earth because it lowers the cost to space by orders of
magnitude. He even called it one of the greatest filters a civilization has to pass through.
And he’s not wrong. Eventually, life will seize to exist on Earth.
The Sun will slowly bake all of us to death.
End of story. That’s still far in the future,
but if we don’t make that step of getting off the planet and eventually even leaving our own solar system,
we will seize to exist with everything else living in our home world.
Doom and Gloom aside, all this is far in the future.
SpaceX’s current goal is not to get us out of this solar system.
It’s a lot simpler. The task right now is to make the largest rocket ever feasible.
Someone must pay for this, and it will be all of us.
Don’t worry, though. SpaceX will have a product you might actually want.
Starlink. This is footage from Chief’s camera again and from March 8th.
It shows Ship 28’s payload section, which recently has been stacked inside the highbay.
Taking a closer look reveals a massive upgrade to the design, and it confirms what we’ve speculated for some time.
The old design was flawed. Likely structurally unstable, it needed to be redesigned, and this is the result.
This view shows the differences side by side.
Old design on the left, and the new design on the right.
The door's shape is different in the corners.
Where there was a single-layer thin bezel surrounding the door itself before, there is a thick multi-layer frame surrounding the door now.
And even though they’ve added the massive frame, the supports needed for structural stability while ground handling the ship is still there.
This shows how much of a structural weak point this payload door is.
It’s basically a huge slice directly through the support structure of the main frame.
Weld marks on the new door show internal bracing.
Probably the best part about all this is that SpaceX is still planning to test Starlink deployment on a flight not too distant into the future.
This is Ship 28, after all. It’s not far down the pipeline.
You know what’s not far either?
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On we go!
Jumping right into RGV Aerial Photographies plane and the latest flyover while SpaceX was lifting Booster 7 off the orbital launch mount reveals
the grand view. By the way, what about it is one of Mauricio’s patrons and has been for years now.
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SpaceX is expanding again. This time near the suborbital pads.
A large area is being prepared for more ground infrastructure.
The elongated part likely being a new spot for another test stand.
Booster/Starship structural test stand is what it says in the original build plans released by SpaceX.
Next to it, in the yet-to-be-graded area, we should see an extension of the blast berm, and in the larger area on top,
we should see an extension of the old suborbital tank farm to accommodate more and faster testing in the near future.
Moving over to the orbital launch pad, the deluge system is also taking shape.
It’s still unclear how SpaceX will put all of this together.
Take a look at this.
Did you catch it? Yep, hard to see.
It’s a video of Relativity Space’s pad at Kennedy Space Center.
Of its flame diverter.
Here’s another one of their test stand at Stennis.
Same diverter.
And last but not least, here’s one of SpaceX’s S1 test stand at McGregor.
Same pipes in the diverter.
Now, these are pictures taken by Chief at Starbase.
It’s the Deluge system about to be installed at the orbital pad after the first launch.
And finally, this is a render made by Owe from SpaceX 3D Creation Eccentric, depicting the new deluge parts.
Look at this. Speculation alert, but doesn’t this look similar?
It’s a closed-loop deluge system.
Part of the water runs through these pipes, taking heat away from the pipes as the rocket engines blast the diverter.
Everything is a bit larger, as we’re talking about 33 Raptor engines here.
This is not in any way meant as “they’re building this.” It’s just some observation I’ve done with Owe and a few others.
What do you think? Could this be what SpaceX wants to build there?
Do let us know in the comments!
We need your help! What’s your take?
Next up, let’s stay with Relativity Space a bit longer!
Their Terran 1 is… trying to launch!
And we have some new insights.
Beginnings are hard. Very hard.
And in the Spaceflight industry, they’re very hard squared.
Relativity Space is demonstrating just that right now.
With two attempts so far on March 8th and on March 11th, they’re hard at work,
ironing out the kinks as they’re slowly approaching their actual launch day.
Here’s a quick overview of what Terran 1 is and why Relativity Space is doing things the way it is.
Terran 1. 85% of the rocket are 3D printed.
Powered by 9 Aeon 1 engines and Methalox fed, it is a textbook new space design.
Innovative, Methane powered, and ready to deliver huge amounts of payload to low Earth orbit.
Wait, Stop. It’s actually not that big.
Terran 1 is a small rocket, and there’s a very good reason for it.
1.5 tons of payload to low Earth orbit, and compared to a Falcon 9, which stands 70 meters tall,
it's about half the size at 35.2 meters with its fairing attached.
Compared to Terran R, which will hopefully be Relativity Space’s second rocket, it looks tiny.
The reason for this is very simple.
Start small. Work your way up to the big league and learn along the way.
Most rocket startups use the same principle.
Blue Origin with their New Shepherd rocket and later the New Glenn.
SpaceX with their Falcon 1 and later Falcon 9. It’s often the same story and there are many prominent examples.
We had five attempts on those two launch days.
Different reasons every time. Launch day number two had two attempts.
Attempt number one was a corner case in the stage separation automation a few seconds before T-0.
The team pushed an update to the vehicle automation, successfully recycled the vehicle, and secured a new T-0 time,
which was an instantaneous window, given it was during the last minute of the launch window extending to 4 pm.
During abort #2: At T-45 seconds, they faced an automated abort on stage 2 fuel pressure, which was only one PSI low.
Flight software, propellant temperatures, and pressure.
All sorts of problems. And all sorts of solutions and many lessons learned and experience gained with a brand new vehicle.
As of recording this video, there’s no official news about a new launch window from Relativity Space.
Launch attempts are expensive, so the team will want to make sure to have every known problem solved before another T-0 time is set.
All our fingers here at team WAI are crossed for Relativity and Terran 1. It’s great to see a new team walk the ladder to Space,
and at the same time, we are shown how many steps this ladder has!
Relativity Space, you rock!
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