Hello, we are TheSpaceXFans and welcome to TheSpaceXShow, the place where you can stay
up to date with everything SpaceX. Today’s video will begin by us taking a little look
at the recent return of Bob Benkhen and Doug Hurley. Then you all know what’s next, we
have Boca Chica updates, Starship SN5 and it’s first hop, as well as future Starship
pieces to look at. Let’s head straight in and get up to date… As you will probably
all be aware, on Sunday, August 2nd, Dragonship Endeavor carrying Bob and Doug splashed down
off the shore of Pensacola. Such a fantastic mission and a fantastic landing, as I mentioned
recently, next for this Crew Dragon will be to fly astronauts on the Crew-2 mission. Expected
to launch in spring of 2021, Bob’s wife will be one of the NASA astronauts aboard
the capsule next. Though, there will also be 1 other NASA, 1 JAXA and 1 ESA astronaut
flying on Crew-2 as well. With the men, there was an American flag that was also returned
to Earth for the first time in 9 years. Launched aboard STS-135, the final Space Shuttle mission,
the flag was left on the ISS. It remained there until now, when the next American capsule
returns to Earth. It will then fly to space again with the astronauts who fly with the
Artemis programme. So, on Sunday, after splashdown, SpaceX’s boat named GO Navigator was waiting
to go and pick up Endeavor. Here we have a great shot from Kyle Montgomery of the recovery
vessel returning to the Pensacola port. Very excited for when this capsule launches for
the 2nd time. Now, we will check out the stuff happening over in Boca Chica, and to start
with we have a little bit of unfortunate news. We saw this a bit last episode, but here is
a better view of the wall SpaceX are currently in the process of erecting. Depending on how
much of the test area will be surrounded by the wall, we will probably not be able to
see as much of what is going on. However, I'm sure there will be plenty of other stuff
for Mary to film. Recently, we’ve been seeing engineers working on the Starhopper vehicle.
Well, now there’s a pump that has been connected to where they’ve been doing the modifications.
Last episode, we saw a transport mount which had some lighting attached to the bottom,
as well as some activity with the roll lift. Here you can see that workers were spotted
lifting the mount onto the roll lift. Then, the mount atop the roll lift were seen sitting
over by the tracking area of the facility. I’m wondering what, if anything they might
be planning to put on display, but keep in mind that the assumptions about it being for
display are just that, assumptions. As always, we’re constantly seeing all sorts of components
in Boca Chica, here we have some sitting on a trailer near the solar farm. Over by the
production area of the facility, there was also another new component on a trailer spotted
arriving. Then, we have a really cool arrival that was also spotted, here we have some tarped
Starship fins. Will be interesting to see which prototype they’ll be attached to,
and I sort of want to say maybe SN8. With those usual Boca Chica updates covered, let’s
move onto the action with Starship prototypes. As I mentioned last episode for the SN5 hop,
SpaceX did have a date for Sunday but obviously with Crew Dragon splashdown, that had to be
the priority. However, during the day, the tank farm was seen doing a bit of venting.
The following day, Monday, August 3rd, the company continued to work near the pad for
the majority of the window. Then, some 3 or 4 hours before the end of the hop window,
the pad started to clear and the road closed. Half an hour before the first hop attempt,
there was a tweet from Elon Musk in response to a tweet from Everyday Astronaut. Musk said
the attempt would be in approximately 33 minutes. Then around 35 minutes after the tweet, activity
by the tank farm had picked up and the prototype itself started venting. Then we were expecting
the 150 metre hop to begin until… nothing. However, you can see that the tank did try
to lift off but automatically aborted. With just about 1 hour remaining in the test window
after the abort, the chances of a recycle and another attempt were slim but still possible.
Whilst the expectation was optimistic, there was some venting that happened, but no more
hop attempts. Just before the end of the road closure and window, Elon Musk hopped on Twitter
and responded to a tweet from Chris Bergin about the abort. He said that the issue was
due to “A Raptor turbopump spin start valve didn’t open, triggering an automatic abort.”
Then he said “We’ll figure out why & retry tomorrow.” So, tomorrow rolls round and
sure enough, before midday SpaceX began all the steps for preparing to hop this machine.
Until, well yeah there was another abort, presumably an automatic abort. Musk responded
to a tweet from Everyday Astronaut a bit later on to say there would most likely be another
attempt. Throughout the day, engineers headed back to the pad and worked diligently to get
a fix implemented as soon as possible. Once they had finished up their work the pad once
again cleared and SpaceX were good to go to re-try the hop. Then, some minutes before
the test was to happen Musk tweeted that there was 3 minutes to go. Then finally, it happened,
the moment we’ve been waiting for, for months… SN5 lifted off. I’m just going to let the
video play and let you take it all in. Then, some hours after the test had concluded, Musk
took to Twitter to let us know what’s next. When asked about what’s on the agenda next,
Musk responded with “We’ll do several short hops to smooth out launch process, then
go high altitude with body flaps.” Also, something Musk mentioned as well in terms
of the legs was “V1.1 legs will be ~60% longer. V2.0 legs will be much wider & taller
— like Falcon, but capable of landing on unimproved surfaces & auto-leveling.” Yesterday
I couldn’t believe what I had just watched. It’s one thing seeing a smaller test tank,
or should we say watertower, fly. It’s another thing when there’s a taller grain silo,
with an offset Raptor engine doing the same test. I cannot wait until this thing gets
a nose with canards and fins, it’s going to look incredible. It only gets better from
here. With that, lets finally take a look at other existing and future Starship tanks.
Here you can see that SN6 is obviously still sitting in the mid bay but has a friend next
to it which is that 4 ring stack we saw recently. Also spotted was a new ring stack that has
been moved out of a fabrication tent. This barrel section also partially has those internal
reinforcements that we usually see on thrust sections. Also, just behind it you can see
there is another section in the tent being constructed which is similar. Then, there
was also another tapered section spotted moving near to the other nose cones. Could SpaceX
be in the process of building yet another new nose cone, it would be crazy if that’s
the case. To finish up the video, we will take a look at something that we’ve not
seen for a while, a build diagram. This one is not from the usual diagram producer as
he has been busy recently, but somebody called Brendan on Twitter created this. Keep in mind
that the new fairing section may not be for SN8, especially since it has no header tank.
However, this is the progress of the SN8 tank, so next up is just stacking. I’m just going
to throw this in quick, there are now some stickers available on TheSpaceXFans shop.
In future I want to add 3D printed Starships, clothing and more, link in the description.
As always though, none of these detailed and frequent updates would be possible without
Mary, otherwise known as BocaChicaGal going out there and filming. She and the whole NASASpaceFlight
team put in an immense amount of work to bring us phenomenal views. Thank you all so much.
That’s it for this episode of TheSpaceXShow, I hope you enjoyed the video, if you did,
make sure to hit the like button and leave a comment down below. If you want to stay
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I upload. Thanks for watching and have a great day!