SpaceX Starship Super Heavy igniter test.
Two SpaceX Starship 20 static fires.
On of them aborted. Why?
Finally a deluge system for the orbital launch mount, and protection for the legs?
And what's the James Webb Space Telescope doing after the launch?
Let's find out!
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
Welcome back to WAI and welcome back to the last episode of 2021.
While there are tons of 2021 review videos popping up on YouTube right now, I have decided against doing one of those and instead focus on progress.
2021 is not over yet and the Space industry seems to agree.
And who to better start with than SpaceX and Starship.
Mauricio from RGV Aerial Photography was up in the air again, taking his stunning pictures of what’s the current center of worldwide rocket development.
Starbase, Texas. SpaceX’s main facility for Starship development.
A 119 meter tall stainless steel monster rocket,
designed to be the most powerful rocket ever flown and at the same time one of the cheapest maybe even the cheapest to launch in rocket history.
An orbital rocket capable of catapulting us into a ne era of spaceflight.
Aspirational goal? 150 tons of payload for 2.5 million dollars.
And it’s not just pure theory either.
SpaceX already has quite a few puzzle pieces in place to turn this dream into reality.
Super Heavy for example. The first stage booster rocket to push Starships into orbit is undergoing final tests before a first static fire can
be done. What you’re looking at here is Super Heavy booster 4, currently sitting on the Starbase Stage Zero orbital launch mount.
And it is about to test its raptor engine igniters.
There. Those are so called torch igniters and they’re used to ignite the engines before lift off and of course also before a static fire.
Chief was on site the next day to take these great pictures.
And you might have already noticed the load spreader attached to the top.
Booster 4 is about to be lifted off of the orbital launch mount again.
Without a doubt in preparation for more construction on the mount itself.
And what definitely might be missing here before a full Booster ignition is a deluge system.
This is what that normally looks like.
It’s the water deluge system at NASA’s Pad39B at Kennedy Space Center and this is a test run for the upcoming Artemis 1 launch in February.
1.7 million liters of water. Pushed 30 meters up in the air just by the pressure.
On SLS, NASA’s planned Moon rocket this is needed on every single launch.
Around 4400 tons of thrust need this kind of noise reduction at lift off according to NASA.
Super Heavy will have 7500 tons of thrust.
Calculating it by the ton of thrust, that would come down to 2.9 million liters of water.
Not according to SpaceX.
In fact the planned deluge system on the orbital launch mount can barely be called a deluge system.
By now I was able to spot a few pipes inside the orbital launch mount.
And if you look at the surroundings of the mount it becomes clear that there can’t be much water involved either.
Part of the environmental protection is to collect the spilled water after a launch.
There’s no such system in place here.
So, the amount of water used must be at a minimum.
Surely not 2.9 million liters.
Time will have to tell, what exactly SpaceX is planning here and how this will evolve.
These mystery structures were spotted by Chief the WAI cam operator at Starbase’s production site.
At first glance they do look like huge dog houses which, of course, they aren’t.
It’s not completely clear yet, but one possible use case for these would be to cover parts of the orbital launch mount legs.
The orbital launch mount legs are made of steel tubes filled with concrete.
That’s very sturdy. But there are pipes and cables running along almost every single one of them.
Those are for hydraulics, fuel, sensors, power… all sorts of very sensible and important systems.
And they will need some sort of protection from the 29 and later even 33 engine blast.
It’s still just a speculation, but it would make sense.
Make the angled side face the inside of the mount so that the blast gets split and deflected away from the legs.
Starships stage zero, so all of the infrastructure needed to launch and catch the rocket stages will need to be highly reusable.
At the Suborbital pads, SpaceX is putting Ship 20 through it’s paces more and more.
This footage from LabPadre’s live cams was recorded on December 29th so on Wednesday.
SpaceX static fired ship 20’s three Raptor 1 engines.
The first static fire looked a bit short but successful.
And maybe most importantly only a few heat tiles fell off this time.
Still not good but an improvement over the last static fire.
Let’s take a look at the Starship 20 heat shield after the static fire as this has been a concern for a while now.
Every time they do a static fire, some of them fall off.
And again, we can see the same result after the recent static fire.
It doesn’t look as bad as on the static fires before,
but still… just a single heat tile falling off could endanger the reentry after ship 20’s orbital flight.
Initially SpaceX must have planned to do a second static fire on the same day, but that attempt got aborted before it could start.
Reason unknown. No damage done but no second ignition either.
Talking heat shield on Ship 20 again, here are some more pictures of the nose cone and of the removed ground handling hard points.
I talked about it in an earlier episode.
SpaceX removed them before Christmas, filling the blank spot up with heat tiles.
There’s a lot of speculation as to why SpaceX did this now and if they’ll add them again to lift Ship 20 down from the suborbital pad.
Looking at the nose cone of Ship 21 reveals exactly the same hardpoints on the nose and they again very much look like they’re designed to be removable.
And looking at the whole nose cone reveals that the heat shield, now almost finished, looks much better than the previous one for Ship 20.
The important factor here likely and simply comes down to practice.
On Ship 20 the heat tile crew was tasked with building the first ever Starship heat shield.
Fast design process. Little time to prepare.
Little to no practice. Now, on Ship 22, only one heat shield in, the results are already worlds apart from the first installation.
This actually does look like it’ll at least stand a chance on reentry.
On we go with some news about Raptor 2.
This is a video posted on Twitter by Adam Cuker.
It shows a Raptor engine test at the SpaceX testing grounds in McGregor, Texas.
And the excitement couldn't be greater.
Exciting! The raptor engine is running on one of the horizontal test stands and it does seem like a full duration burn test as it ran for several
minutes before shutdown. Perfectly fitting my speculation about SpaceX right now switching to Raptor version 2, Elon Musk answered under the tweet.
All Raptor 2 tests are going forward.
So, that’s it. No more Raptor 1. No more prototype engine.
From here on Starships and Super Heavy boosters will be equipped with Raptor version 2. The big difference here of course being that Raptor 2
is not a prototype engine anymore.
It will have far less sensors and cables and due to this the engines head will look much less cluttered.
Lighter, more streamlined and much more capable of regular Starship flights.
Regular Starship flights. That’s what we all want to see.
There’s one key component still missing to get the party started, though.
The FAA environmental assessment still pending approval.
And the FAA is taking this very seriously as it seems.
A new target date for issuing the final assessment has recently been set.
February 28th of 2022.
So, no early orbital flight in January or February even though SpaceX very much seems to be nearing flight readiness.
And the reason stated, they originally planned to release the final assessment on December 31st.
However,
due to the high volume of comments submitted on the Draft PEA by the public and due to discussions and consultation efforts with consulting parties,
the FAA announced an update to the schedule.
New date issued is February 28th of 2022.
What do you think? Is the FAA dragging out a decision or do you think that the extra time is needed to make a proper decision?
As always, tell me in the comments!
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James Webb Mission Update
On we go with some much needed updates on the James Webb Space telescope!
For those who have missed this, it was the best possible present the Spaceflight industry could have given to team Space this year.
I watched it live with my family on Christmas day.
Who here didn’t? Yeah. That’s something you don’t want to miss at all.
If you still managed to miss it due to overwhelmingly awesome Christmas activities or a power outage, an asteroid falling down on your house.
You name it. I got you covered.
It went fine. Ariane Space did their homework and the Ariane 5 rocket blasted off into a very cloudy Corou Spaceport sky.
Not so good for launch photographers, but perfectly fine for James Webb.
Booster sep, Fairing sep. Payload sep.
Done! That was easy, right?
Anyone, who knows the Telescope knows that this was just slightly not at all the end of the critical mission part.
13 days of deployment and half a year of mission critical tests and adjustments are needed to make this technological marvel work as intended.
And NASA is providing a website for all of us to follow live through each and every step.
They provide a video for each deployment step with detailed information.
They show you the current distance from Earth and towards Langrange Point 2, Webb’s final destination.
It’s got everything your information thirsty mind needs for the rest of the trip and maybe most importantly it keeps you up to date on the milestones it passes.
A link to the site is in the description of the video, and if you’re too lazy to check the site daily, you can always follow me on Twitter!
Among other things I do post daily updates on the deployment sequence!
And if that doesn’t satisfy your need for knowledge yet, maybe today’s sponsor can help you out!
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The good stuff.
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2021!