Today I’ll explain to you, what a flight proven Raptor and a Super Heavy Grid fin look like,
what plans SpaceX has for the Starship & Super Heavy orbital launch mount and what’s happening at ULA and Blue Origin to counter SpaceX’s lead in reusable rockets.
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
SpaceX is in a cold freeze lockdown in Boca Chica Texas right now.
No new road closures, no tests announced.
Starship SN10 is stuck in a cold front.
With temperatures going down as low as -4 Celsius or around 25 Fahrenheit,
the Gulf coast surrounding the SpaceX launch site right now is well below the usual February mean temperature of around 18 degrees Celsius or
roughly 65 Fahrenheit. No tests does not mean no advancement in Boca Chica though.
SpaceX is working full steam ahead on all fronts to advance the Starship program as quick as possible.
Do you remember this from the last episode?
I spotted some strange stands on one of RGV aerials pictures arranged on the ground at the construction site in a rather strange pattern.
A few hours before I released my episode, Dayton Costlow released a few very nice pictures and videos on Twitter.
If you do not know him yet, he right now is one of the most active photographers on Twitter.
Go check out his account at @DaytonCostlow.
On his footage we can see, what those stands are being used for right now.
I’ve heard a few call it an orbital launch table,
but I’ll stick with a support structure base plate for now as that’s what this kind of stuff is called by NASA.
It serves two different purposes.
If the predictions are correct, those white elements should be this.
Its main purpose of course is to carry Super Heavy and Starship prototypes before they launch from the mount.
It’s second purpose becomes apparent as soon as we imagine the circle as a finished part.
It has a giant hole in the middle and the wall is made of inches thick steel.
It channels exhaust gasses down through the hole and usually directly into a flame diverter.
On SpaceX’s construction though, this giant channel will just focus the exhaust onto the concrete foundation below.
One possible solution and already predicted in our animation from August of last year would be a massive deluge system.
These rainbirds would spill thousands of liters of water against the exhaust gasses and turn the dangerous heat into water vapor and absorb the
shockwaves. The water could then just flow away through the wide openings surrounding the pad.
The ring is half finished by now and it will be very interesting to see,
if it actually is a part of the orbital launch mount and how SpaceX will attach it, when it’s done.
Thank you, Dayton, you rock!
On we go with a few more pictures from the launch site.
Now take a look at this. It’s one of Mary’s wonderful videos for NASA Spaceflight and it shows a large square metal object with some curved edges
at the top. Does that look familiar?
This is a Falcon 9 reusable or F9R test flight out of McGregor Texas and it shows the first time, grid fins were used by SpaceX.
Those are the waffle like paddles on the outside of the booster.
Waffles are always good!
A common sight today they are a key element for SpaceX’s reusability efforts.
Besides the reaction control thrusters and the thrust vector control on the main engines they are responsible for guiding the boosters back down
to the landing site. Falcon 9’s first stage is equipped with hypersonic grid fins which manipulate the direction of the stage’s lift during reentry.
The fins are placed in an X-wing configuration and are stowed on ascent and deployed during reentry.
While the fins are relatively small, they can roll, pitch, and yaw the 14-story stage up to 20 degrees in order to target a precision landing.
Switching back to Mary’s video from the launch site, there are a lot of similarities between this part and a Falcon 9 grid fin.
The size of course is much bigger, but that would be needed for a Super Heavy booster.
However if this really is a grid fin pathfinder for Super Heavy, it’s not nearly as large as I would have thought it to be.
Nope!
When ever SpaceX depicted a Super Heavy booster, the fins were huge.
Around 6 meters long. That’s why we’ve always depicted them in the same way of course.
As seen in this top-down view of Nick Henning’s Super Heavy booster, the size becomes apparent.
The hull is 9 meters in diameter and the fins are more than half as long.
And again, switching back to Mary’s picture there are lots of question marks.
There’s no connecting hinge. The object looks very poorly made too.
Neopork from Twitter had a great Idea though.
What if this isn’t the whole fin?
If we just pretended for a second that this was just the tip of a fin, it would fit pretty well.
Even the thinner and wider spaces between the metal sheets would be explainable due to its trapezoid shape at the tip.
And if this only is the tip, the fins must be truly massive.
In other news, SpaceX has had yet another shipment of a Raptor engine and this one is special.
It’s already flown once. This is engine number 27 and it powered the 150 meter hop of Starship SN5 back in 2020.
What a wonderful picture. Up close we can see all the wear and tare caused by the previous action.
The Methane inlet is burned and rough looking.
Directly below that starts the methane turbo pump.
Its fuel inducer looks much newer.
Going further down, the main combustion chamber seems to be the original one as well.
Behind it we can see the Oxidizer pump, which might have seen some replacement parts as well.
Overall, this is a very hopeful sight.
SpaceX reusing Raptor engines means that even the early prototypes might be capable of doing several flights already.
This veteran is likely going to be installed into Starship SN11.
Which is already waiting in the High bay to get the last of its bottom fins installed.
After that and some left over work it should be ready for its test campaign already.
Are we going to see two Starships at the launch site again,
or does SpaceX’s risk evaluation team violently shake their heads pointing at the SN9 crash, which miraculously didn’t damage SN10?
Last but not least we have the orbital launch mount itself and the landing pad.
One of the most obvious indicators for SpaceX not launching a Starship in the next few days still is the ongoing landing pad construction.
SpaceX is putting a second layer of concrete on the pad in freezing temperatures.
Likely in preparation for another Starship crash landing and a quicker aftermath repair.
Musk has already given out his estimate for how likely Starship SN10 will stick a landing on the next test flight.
Replying to Marcus House on Twitter he said 60%.
That’s on the optimist side of things.
It’s never bad to prepare for the other 40% though, right?
SpaceX is preparing for all eventualities, but we shouldn’t forget one fact while all these crashes happen.
SpaceX still is the lonely leader when it comes to rocket recovery efforts.
Vulcan & New Glenn
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Which brings us right through to our second topic.
I love a good Segway. What about the other launch providers?
Who will be the next when it comes to reusable rockets?
First of all, we have ULA ramping up their Vulcan test campaign.
In development since 2014,
it will do a lot of things better than any ULA rocket before and in some cases it will even be able to beat SpaceX, without reusabillity.
The Department of defense for example awarded three initial missions under the new contracts.
Two launches went to ULA and one to SpaceX.
Looking at the price tags though,
the one launch awarded to SpaceX comes in at 316 million dollars and the two awarded to ULA only come in slightly above it at 337 million dollars.
How does ULA do it? The same way as SpaceX.
With a radically new design. A single high performing,
high capacity stretched booster stage utilizing two Blue Origin BE4 methane engines and up to 6 solid rocket boosters providing 20% more thrust
than a Delta 4 Heavy. On top of that ULA has a much larger payload fairing than SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.
Later on,
ULA will utilize the Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology or SMART to recover the engine section of its Vulcan boosters and with it the
most valuable part of the rocket booster, the main engines.
The engines are 25% of the boosters weight and 65% of its costs.
With a hyper sonic reentry and an inflatable heat shield the plan is to catch the engines with a helicopter before the touch down.
Later down the line ULA is even planning to do orbital refueling to extend the payload capabilities.
This way ULA could reach for the entire solar system.
Commercial Asteroid mining, commercial habitats, a multi planetary future.
All terms normally only connected to SpaceX’s Starship.
And all that for less than 100 million per launch.
There’s a reason, why SpaceX is pushing with their Starship.
The competition is not waiting around for much longer.
And what you’re looking at here is Tory Bruno’s favorite toy.
A brand-new Vulcan booster pathfinder.
Arriving at the ULA Vertical Integration Facility at Kennedy Space Center, it will play the role of a large test dummy.
It will perform operations which test the procedures, handling hardware and clearances for maneuvering the massive stage around the ULA VIF.
Later then it will be used to do first fueling tests at Pad 41.
In preparations for upcoming launches, ULA is giving SLC 41 a major upgrade.
New commodity storage areas, an upgrade to the acoustic suppression system, a new rail system.
ULA will create the Vulcan launch platform.
A connected system to ensure fast cadence and short notice launch capabilities.
And the Vulcan journey is starting right now.
With a first launch slated for q4 of 2021, the system is getting ready for service.
And that first launch is directly going to go the Moon.
Peregrine, a small lander built by Astrobotics will be the payload.
One of the payloads on board the Peregrine lander will be the Asagumo 4 legged robot by the UK.
It is a tech demonstrator. Basically a cubesat on legs which could be deployed in large numbers to explore subsurface areas on the Moon like lava
tubes. Those are of particular interest to scientists as possible future habitats for human colonies on the Moon.
ULA is flexing muscles and shows the world that they have not lost track of next generation development.
In August of last year, Bruno even teased the space community by answering with yes,
when being asked about future reusability plans after Vulcans SMART technology to recover engines.
Complete booster recovery?
What’s your plan, Bruno? That’s not all from Kennedy Space Center though.
There’s another big player here, getting ready to launch a fully reusable rocket booster.
Blue Origin of course.
And while we have tons of pictures from ULA basically about everything there is including manufacturing, we have very very little from Blue Origin.
I am scratching my head as to the secretive behavior but that’s all we got, so let’s make the best of it.
This is a picture taken by Stephen C.
Smith on February 12th. It shows the main construction facility located close to the Kennedy Space Center at exploration park and the door is
open. Out comes a massive jig to hold up large rocket hardware.
Behind it we can see a ring like object with fins and behind that a large white booster hull.
This without a doubt is the first picture of a New Glenn booster and maybe even its control surfaces.
In Blue Origins initial animation showing a complete New Glenn launch, we can see these aerodynamic surfaces depicted.
Different to SpaceX Blue Origin wants to use wings that tilt rather than Grid fins.
And these wings definitely look like what we could see in the animation.
So, as always, there’s no longer topic about Blue Origin, even though I’d love to say more.
There just isn’t anything else to see.
What this picture shows us though is that Blue Origin isn’t sleeping either.
Even though they might be the quietest rocket developer out there, they’re doing something.
Pictures and news are just far apart.
If anyone from Blue Origin is watching this, please do give us some more insights.
We’d love to talk about it more often!
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