Kind thanks go to Brilliant for sponsoring todays episode.
Today amongst other things I’ll explain to you,
what SpaceX is doing to compensate for missing flame diverters, what might need
to be done in the future and what went wrong at the recent ESA Vega launch!
My name is Felix and I am your host for today’s episode of What about it!?
And as always, there’s been a lot going on in the Space industry lately,
So let's dive right in!
Starship Updates
Hello WAI family, thank you for tuning in again and thank you very much for the overwhelming support we are getting from the community!
It's truly is an honor to be able to watch the space industry developments together with you!
Now, as always, let’s start with SpaceX’s Starship.
By far the most revolutionary development out there right now.
Anyone watching the SpaceX Starship development in Boca Chica Texas closely knows about the
recent mishap involving Starship Serial Number 8 and a rather spectacular Static fire.
On November 11th, SpaceX ignited the Raptor engines under their latest prototype in an
effort to open up the way for the anticipated 15-kilometer test flight,
and something went wrong.
On Episode 133 I speculated that this would not cause a big delay,
as it was unlikely that SpaceX had design problems on their methaloxfull flow staged combustion Raptor engines.
The assumption was based on the measures SpaceX was taking to repair the damage.
SpaceX replaced a damaged engine and installed Raptor engine 42.
As seen here in Mary’s awesome footage for NASASpaceflight.com work is done by now.
So, what was the real problem?
What are the issues SpaceX is facing right now?
What you’re looking at here are pictures from an official NASA document talking about
Refractory Materials for Flame Deflector Protection.
And Martyte is mentioned 46 times in it.
It’s one of the go to substances, when it comes to repairing flame diverters or specially
protecting parts of it like bolts and water deluge systems.
Good pictures for this heat protecting refractor material are hard to find
And Martyte is costly and difficult to apply, it says.
Especially refractory concrete is often replaced or additionally protected with this ceramic-filled epoxy.
Martyte works as an ablative coating, meaning it chips away comparable to a capsule heat shield.
Ablation leads to the heat being transported away from the surface the Martyte is trying
to protect.
And this seems to be the problem SpaceX is facing.
If Martyte is supposed to chip away, what happens to the chips?
So, traditionally Martyte is used inside or close to the flame trench of a launch pad.
Once the engines ignite and the Martyte starts it’s job, the flow of exhaust gasses is
so strong that it sucks all the chips through the flame trench and away from the rocket.
In SpaceX’s case though, the Martyte is being thrown up and that’s what you can see in
the video from LabPadre’s live stream.
Due to the fact that SpaceX decided not to have any sort of flame trench or diverter
system on their rocket test pads including the orbital launch mount, which is under construction
right now, the Martyte can’t go anywhere else but up.
And that’s what it does.
A few hours after finishing the edit for Episode
133 Elon Musk tweeted, that about two seconds after starting the engines, Martyte covering
the concrete below the test pad shattered, sending blades of hardened rock into the engine bay.
One of those rock blades severed an avionics cable, which lead to a bad shut down of one
of the Raptor engines.
A bad shutdown in this case can mean anything.
The sequence being messed up, valves not closing properly, temperatures going too high.
Whatever it was, the result was a destroyed engine and the loss of the pneumatic system
which then also lead to the LOX header tank in the nose not venting properly.
In one of RGV Aerials wonderful images from above, this damage can even be spotted.
Looking closer at the concrete pad below test pad A, the damage becomes visible.
The surface layer is completely charred and parts are missing.
This was not the first static fire on this concrete pad and it’s also already seen
two 150 meter hops from Starships Serial Number 5 & 6.
These ignitions it seems have taken their toll and the concrete constantly has to be
repaired using... Martyte.
And there’s one other site, where SpaceX is planning to ignite Raptor engines when it
comes to the South Texas launch site.
The famous Orbital Launch Mount.
Remember the times, when I was 110% convinced that this would become a water tower,
even though there was a sign next to it literally saying orbital launch mount.
And I wasn’t the only one either being misled.
Now here comes reason number one, why I was so convinced.
There is no flame trench or diverter planned for a 28 Raptor engine Super Heavy launch
that will take place around 15 to 20 meters above a solid and completely flat concrete pad.
In fact, Elon Musk has even tweeted, that there is no such system planned for the orbital
launch mount and that this might turn out to be a mistake.
Was he already anticipating problems with the Martyte back then?
Bobby Car, Tesla Cyber Truck, Airbus A380… that’s large.
Keep in Mind, that we are talking about very very large rockets here.
If NASA would have wanted to launch a Saturn V without a flame diverter,
many would have found that to be rather strange too.
Thank you, Blender 3D Creation Eccentric for allowing me to use this size comparison and
for your Patreon support!
You Rock!
Now, what is SpaceX going to do to reactivate the test pads after the Martyte problem has
been discovered?
Building a flame trench or a diverter would take some time.
Time, SpaceX would have to write off as Tests could not be conducted and the prototype construction
is going faster and faster!
Here you can see Starship Serial Number 15
Eight prototype Starships either ready or in production.
Feels a bit like… we might be heading into a situation here.
To be able to continue testing as fast as possible, Elon Musk and his team decided to
implement a few quicker fixes.
Avionics cables moving to steel pipe shields and adding water-cooled steel pipes to the test pad.
So far none of this work has been spotted, but it shouldn’t take long to get some rudimentary
Martyte chip protection installed.
There are no test dates set as of recording the Episode, but that might change any day.
Staying on top of heat protection, there are a few new pictures regarding Starship heat shield development.
Here’s another great picture from Mary.
It shows Serial Number 8 sitting on the test pad after the Martyte disaster.
More explicitly it shows the test heat tiles installed on every prototype to test attachment variants.
Looking closer at the picture one heat tile can be spotted that does not look too good.
It’s not confirmed, but it’s likely that what we’re seeing here might as well be
damage from the Martyte chips, thrown up by the recent static fire.
This is a very good example for how important it is that SpaceX solves this problem.
If something like this happens at an orbital launch on the… well… orbital launch mount,
this could be rather bad for the outcome of the mission.
In a very tragic and well-known accident NASA already found out that losing heat tiles on
an orbiter can lead to the worst case scenario.
So, SpaceX will want to make very sure, that this does not repeat itself on the orbital launch mount.
SpaceX is in the middle of developing the needed heat shield for orbital Starships.
This is a picture of Starship Serial Number 9 which recently got moved out of the high bay.
It shows lots and lots of the typical three pin mounting points for heat tiles SpaceX has been narrowing
in on to attach the tiles to the stainless steel hull.
Serial Number 9 will be the first Starship to have a large area covered by these tiles.
70 tiles can be counted here.
That’s a huge step up from the nine tiles attached to Starship Serial Number 8.
The reason for so many more attachment pins compared to actual tiles may very well be,
that each weld point needed to attach a connector pin changes the Steel.
It deforms and it changes the overall strength and property.
So SpaceX might just be testing, how the hull changes during the welding.
Finally taking one last look at the orbital launch mount, more construction work has been
spotted between the launch mount and Highway 4.
In this picture taken by RGV Aerial Photography on November 13th, the first few details can already be spotted.
The two concrete boxes in the ground.
Lots of rebar next to it.
I speculated, that this might be the terminal for the arriving fuel and oxidizer pipes from the Tank farm
A few days later on November 18th Mary managed to take a few pictures for NSF and it seems
that a lot more work is being done surrounding those concrete boxes.
Cladding is being put in place for concrete pouring.
More Rebar has arrived on site.
It will be very interesting to see what exactly the infrastructure for the orbital launch
mount will look like.
What is going on here?
If you have any idea, please do let us know in the comments!
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Problems are to be expected when doing prototype work.
Especially, when it comes to completely new developments like SpaceX’s Starship.
Fingers crossed and all the best wishes to the whole SpaceX team for relentlessly working
on an absolutely fascinating project!
You rock!
Vega Rocket Launch gone wrong
As the second topic for today we’re going
to look at ESA and Arianespace and their recent Vega rocket launch which lead to the loss
of the vehicle and its payloads.
We’re going to find out what exactly went wrong and what the implications are for the
European launch business.
On November 17th ESA and Ariane Space launched flight 17 of the Vega rocket with two satellites on board.
The SEOSAT-Ingenio Earth observation satellite for Spain and ESA, a high-resolution optical
imaging mission and the first Earth observation satellite for Spain.
It was meant to be fully operational by April 2021 and its price tag was around 200million euros.
The second payload was TARANIS. The name stands for: Tool for the Analysis of Radiation from lightning and Sprites.
It was supposed to take a look at Lightning in the upper atmosphere,
at altitudes of 20 to 100km above thunderstorms.
It was the first satellite of its kind.
Specifically aiming at collecting more knowledge about how lightning forms and what kinds of radiation it produces.
The Vega Rocket, in operation since 2012 and developed and mostly manufactured in the AVIO
factory in Italy has 3 solid fuel stages and one Dimazine fueled upper stage.
Fully built from composite material and with many stages it’s a rather complex rocket for its size
and with a payload of around 1500 kilograms it’s a so called small-lift vehicle.
The cost per launch, a more and more important metric since SpaceX has entered the market
is roughly 37 million US dollars.
And everything looked fine at first on November 17th.
The rocket took off under a clear sky and the first three solid fuel stages performed nominally.
At 8 minutes into the flight though problems started to unfold.
Right after the upper stage had separated, the vehicle started to tumble out of ccontrol.
Chief technical officer of Ariane space, Roland Lagier later said that:” This loss of control was permanent,
inducing significant tumbling behavior, and then the trajectory started
to deviate rapidly from the nominal one, leading to the loss of the mission.”
But, what went wrong?
What caused the second failure of a Vega rocket in just over 16 months?
The problem was with the AVUM upper stage.
The analysis of the mission’s telemetry and the vehicle production data, led to the conclusion,
that cables leading to two thrust vector control actuators were inverted.
Meaning, that the commands, meant to go to one actuator, instead went to the other one
which made the upper stage uncontrollable and lead to the loss of trajectory.
What a shame!!
Something similar happened on a Russian Proton-M launch in 2013, where velocity sensors were
wired with the wrong polarity.
The rocket thought up was down and down was up and it just wanted to do a good job,
be a good rocket and fly up!
Human error is to be blamed for both incidents.
And as said, this is not the first time a Vega rocket has failed.
On July 11th of 2019, a thermal protection design flaw in the second stage’s forward
dome area lead to a deviation from the nominal flight path at around 2 minutes and 20 seconds
and in the end to the loss of the vehicle.
As a fun fact, the loss of the Arab Emirates Falcon Eye 1 military satellite
lead to the most expensive insurance claim for a satellite in space flight history.
Resulting in a claim of over 411 million dollars for one satellite.
The satellites of Flight 17 were valued at nearly 400 million dollars as well
and this second launch failure brings Vega down to a total launch reliability rate of only 88%.
As another fun fact, this brings 2020 up to a total of 9 failed launch attempts in total,
which is the worst year since 1971 in that respect.
Vega C, an upgraded version of the current Vega rocket is planned to have a first launch in 2021
but this second launch failure in a little over 16 months casts a shadow on
the still young launcher system.
Ariane Space has some work to do.
Keeping up with an ever-accelerating innovation rate due to companies like SpaceX and Rocket Lab
is no easy task for the older launch providers.
Agility, state of the art knowledge and smart decision making are needed.
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And as always last but certainly not least I want to take the time to thank the team behind the show!
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Thank you for brainstorming, researching, fact checking, communicating, organizing
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Have a wonderful weekend!
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