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SpaceX Starship Updates – Chinas Next-Gen Crew Capsule & Long March 5B Rocket Explained
My name is Felix and I am your host for todays Episode of What about it!?
And as always, there has been a lot going on in the Space industry lately, so let’s dive right in!
Starship Updates
Right now, there’s almost no doubt anymore,
that SpaceX is taking the Starship program extremely seriously.
With Elon Musk recently announcing Starship as the number one priority at SpaceX
and efforts ramping up faster and faster, this entirely new class of rocket has many cameras pointed at it.
Let’s start this one with one of my favorite things to do. Let’s analyze some Starship Parts,
shall we? Does the term Thrust puck tell you anything? If not, it will after this.
The Starship Thrust puck is a very special part, that has caused a lot of trouble over time.
It’s arguably the part on a Starship that takes the most force in flight.
It is the connection between rocket engines and the main structure.
Imagine holding three, later even 6 raptor engines. That’s over 1200 tons at full thrust.
Now you know,
what a thrust puck has to be able to do. And this is it. The latest thrust puck design from SpaceX.
And it went through some wild design changes over time.
This for example is the first iteration. Mark 1’s thrust puck. Yeah, the whole thing.
It was a massive slab of steel. Heavy and with a serious design flaw.
It was an inverted cone. This meant, that the welds connecting the thrust puck to the engine
dome would have to hold much more force than actually needed.
Here’s a schematic render done by Rafael Adamy a while back. Awesome job by the way. Follow him on twitter for more Starship updates.
The light grey part is Starship Mark 1’s thrust puck.
The flaw in design only got detected with Serial Number 1 though, Mark 1’s predecessor due to the fact that Mark 1 was never
intended to fly.
On February 28th
SpaceX engineers got a very impressive reminder to rethink the design, leading to the comment from Elon “don’t shuck the puck!”..
And they did rethink the design.
They presented a part, that perfectly fits into one of Elon Musk’s prime engineering rules.
The best part is no part. Or almost no part in this case.
They reduced the massive steel part down to a ring directly connected to the bulkhead with a little cone attached to it.
As you can see here in one of Mary’s beautiful pictures,
this is Serial Number 4’s lower bulkhead including the new thrust puck design.
There’s some more structural improvement on the engine dome, but overall it’s the much more elegant solution.
And here’s the latest version. A brand-new shot by Mary taken late last week.
It shows the next evolutionary step. The cone now attaches directly to the ring, making it a smaller part.
Also, the fuel distribution layout has changed again.
Now,
all the fuel pipes neede d for the three raptors are routed directly through the ring, where before the methane pipes coming down to the engines
through the down comer
exited the dome well outside of the
thrust puck. So all in all, it’s an even smaller and lighter part that has gained some
complexity due to the fuel distribution being much more compact now. By the way,
this could be the first part of Starship Serial number 9, that we see.
Since serial number 5 & 6 already have their thrust pucks and Serial number 7 and
most likely also serial number 8 are smaller test tanks, the next Starship to need a thrust puck in
Boca Chica should be Serial number 9. Talking about insanely fast progress.
What a beautiful picture, seeing Serial number 5’s and 6’s tank stack next to each other. Thank you, Mary! You Rock!
Besides two starships almost ready for testing, SpaceX right now is working on something even bigger.
As mentioned in the last episode, we’re getting closer and closer to Super Heavy,
SpaceX’s Starship Booster rocket, capable of lifting a Starship into orbit.
To be able to build a Super Heavy though you need a pretty large building to fit it in.
This is, where the Starship Super heavy bay comes in. Reaching up to 81 meters,
it will tower over everything else we can currently find at the Boca Chica Starship facility. But how do you build such a large building?
With the help of a super heavy crane of course.
Let me introduce you to the Manitowoc 18000
lattice boom crawler crane.
At max capacity it can lift up to 600 metric tons, with an optional lifting maxer attachment even
750 tons and is capable of reaching up to
121.9
meters. It has a 600 horse power diesel engine and can self-assemble and disassemble.
It’s a so called super heavy crawler crane. What a fitting name for the task. Since these machines are very expensive to rent,
it’s very likely, that SpaceX will start construction of the super heavy high bay very soon. I’ll keep you informed
as always. And on we go with Test tank Serial number 7. Since the testing one week ago, workers at the SpaceX
Boca Chica launch site have been busy repairing and upgrading the tank for more testing.
The leak in the top dome has been sealed and a new double vent system has been attached to the top.
There are two possible reasons for this upgrade. Either SpaceX wants redundancy in case of a vent
malfunctioning due to for example being iced up or they want the capability of faster de-tanking.
Either way, Serial Number 7 is ready for more testing after reaching 7.6 bars last week
and we already have plenty new test dates in the calendar.
Can the next tests reach the needed 8.5 bar target?
All the way through to Friday, SpaceX has secured every single day for possible test activity.
So basically it’s worth checking LabPadre or NASA SpaceFlight every day right now. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time.
Last but not least, SpaceX Boca Chica has a pet now. A dog named Zeus. It’s just not the normal dog
you’d find at any other launch provider.
SpaceX has bought a Boston Dynamics Spot. Besides it being absolutely awesome
seeing a Boston Dynamics robot at the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica,
it’s not known yet, what exactly it will be used for.
It might be, that SpaceX will use the robot for early
reconnaissance after a test failure similar to the way they have used flying drones before.
At one-point SpaceX had some trouble with Starship serial number 4 for example. After a test,
they could not de-tank the prototype properly and had to wait a whole day to be able to send workers back to the pad.
A Boston Dynamics Spot could help here by inspecting the site,
sniffing for gas leaks or even operate the fuel farm to manually start the de-tanking process.
Certainly, a very inspiring use of modern technology!
If you want to get more info about SpaceX's Starship development
details, about what exactly they're doing and lots and lots of other interesting insights into Blue Origin, NASA,
Rocket Lab and many other launch providers and their rockets, I suggest you check out my quickly growing library of episodes!
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Thank You! So, let’s sum it up.
We have advanced parts reaching all the way up to a possible Serial Number 9,
we have two Starship tank stacks almost ready with Serial number 6 likely to receive a nose cone and possibly fins.
We have A Super Heavy launch pad and a high-bay in construction and SpaceX is using advanced Boston Dynamics robots on site.
If that’s not impressive, I don’t know what is.
Chinese next-gen human flight SpaceX
is advancing on all fronts right now, but what about others? What do other nations do to keep up with this kind of progress?
Wenchang Space Launch Center, Hainan Province, China,
May 5th 2020. What you’re seeing here, is the maiden launch of the Long March-5B Heavy Lift launch vehicle.
Lift-Off thrust:
833 metric tons.
Payload capacity to low earth orbit: 25 metric tons.
And to make it even more impressive, on top of it, concealed by a massive fairing, is the CMS,
Chinas new next-generation crewed spacecraft.
CMS is designed to be reusable and it can carry both astronauts and cargo.
The capsule did it’s first test flight, reentered the atmosphere and landed again on May 8th.
This marks a very important step in the human spaceflight program of the people’s republic of China.
With a crew capacity of either 7 astronauts or 3 astronauts and 500 kilograms of cargo,
it will provide China with the right vehicle to transfer crew and cargo towards their new modular space station.
As a fun fact, Chinese Astronauts are known as Taikonauts as the mandarin word for Space is taikong.
Planned for launch in q2 of 2021 with the core module called Tianhe,
China is on the brink of constructing their next level modular space station.
With roughly one 5th of the mass of the international space station
it will be a significant undertaking for a single country. A total of 12 launches are planned for the construction phase.
And China wants to go even further with the new capsule.
It is capable of crewed flight to the Moon.
Besides all this, China is also planning a lunar sample return mission in Q4 of this year
and a Mars Rover and orbiter mission next month.
Space is a collaboration effort and China wants to be involved. In
2017 a collaboration between Italy and the people’s republic of China for human spaceflight was signed and if everything goes well,
this hopefully is only one of many more collaborations to follow in the future.
These collaborations are born from the desire to connect and learn from each other.
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we wouldn’t have been capable of alone.
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So, this wraps up todays Episode of What about it!? Would you pet Zeus
and what’s your thought on the Chinese crewed flight program? As always, tell me in the comments!
And we’re at the end of Episode 99 and almost to the big 100!
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