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Today amongst other things I’ll explain to you, how far SpaceX has progressed on the first Super Heavy Booster,
What SpaceX is planning in regards to fuel production and what you’ll see and feel while returning from deep space in a SpaceX Starship.
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 - the engines lit
Hello WAI family, thank you for tuning in again!
SpaceX is busier than ever before.
Building the first ever fully reusable rocket on a scale larger than the famous Saturn V Moon rocket is drawing in the attention of the world more and more every day.
And this is it. Starship Serial Number 8 on test pad A at the SpaceX south Texas launch site.
And even at first glance it becomes apparent, why we watch the development so closely.
This is something big. Something that’s never been there before.
And it might be our ticket to a crewed flight to Mars.
Just imagine it landing on the red planet.
First pictures returning to Earth of Astronauts exiting the vehicle and leaving that famous first footprint.
Not in gray this time, but in the orange reddish soil of another planet.
And that’s why we watch what SpaceX is doing in Boca Chica twice a week.
That’s why we analyze every step, cheer on every static fire and stare at the screens in disbelief, every time a prototype explodes,
collapses or bursts under pressure.
But we haven’t seen that for a while now and that’s a good sign.
What you’re looking at here is a test that was performed on November 9th, so only 4 days ago and recorded on LabPadre’s live stream.
Like his stream and subscribe to his channel to pay respect for the awesome work he and his team are doing for all of us.
It shows a so called wet dress rehearsal.
This means, that every step leading up to an actual launch was performed and tested with the exception of the actual ignition.
On launch day SpaceX’s Starship Serial Number 8 will look and do exactly the same.
And the good news is, it seems to have done just fine.
The wet dress rehearsal came and went without any incident.
No collapsing hull, no pressure leak or explosion.
SpaceX by now knows how to build the Starship hull.
They more and more know how to build our future in Space.
Can you believe it?
And just one day later, on November 10th, SpaceX’s Starship Serial Number 8,
the latest in an ever growing line of more and more advanced prototypes,
ignited its Raptor engines yet again for a Static fire fueled only by its header tanks.
The header tanks are special smaller propellant and oxidizer tanks built into the Starship to have a separate reservoir for landings.
And the Starship did a good burn as it seems.
There was some debris thrown up while the burn was conducted, but it seems, that the Starship itself was undamaged.
So either a non-important part of the test stand got ripped off or, and that’s the theory I am favoring right now,
a part of the concrete under the test stand gave in under the immense force of the Raptor pressure and got blown away.
It likely looks more dramatic than it actually was.
After the test, SpaceX did cancel the November 11 test window, but testing continued on November 12th.
Starship Serial Number 8 was put to the test again and this time something seriously went wrong.
Before the ignition everything went as planned.
The prototype was fueled, and everything proceeded towards ignition.
Immediately after firing the engines though things went wrong.
Sparks were visible again. The burn lasted only for around 3 seconds and even with the naked eye the burn does not look very regular.
Flickering in the end signaled a problem.
Then, around 10 seconds after the static fire, flames were visible under the Starship.
Something that looked like molten metal was falling down.
Elon Musk tweeted after the incident, giving an explanation for what we saw.
SpaceX lost the vehicles pneumatic system and as a result the pressure in the LOX header tank was rising more and more.
Musk even feared losing the vehicle, if the header tank would burst.
As a safety measure SpaceX builds in Burst disks though to prevent these things from happening.
A burst disk is a thin sheet of metal sealing a pipe that bursts at a certain pressure,
releasing the oxygen in the process and preventing an over pressure event or simply put an explosion.
He also gave a few hints on what might have caused the problem.
There’s a rocket nerd expression for it.
It’s called an engine rich exhaust.
Meaning that the engine shoots parts of itself out of the nozzle.
Musk said, it could have been a molten preburner or a fuel hot gas manifold that gave in and was ejected through the nozzle.
This in return somehow caused the Starship to lose its pneumatic system, needed to open and close valves.
One or more of the Raptor engines will need to be replaced and Musk’s team of engineers will need to find the exact cause and redesign the part
to prevent it from happening again.
This will likely take some time.
That’s prototyping at its best.
SpaceX is also getting ready to deliver us some nice shots of Starship Serial Number 8 in flight.
Nomadd from the NSF forums took this picture of a Telescope being setup close to the launch site clearly on a tracking mount.
SpaceX will deliver pictures for the engineering staff and of course for all of us to see, when Serial Number 8 takes flight.
And Starship Serial Number 8 is not the only important prototype, SpaceX is working on.
These are Starship Serial Number 9’s forward flap Hinges seen through Mary’s lens for NASA Spaceflight.com.
If you can even call it a hinge anymore.
Yet again it’s a perfect example for how parts are becoming more and more complex and sophisticated.
More and more thought is already being put into reducing weight and gaining strength at the same time.
Each hole you see here reduces the weight by a bit.
And each reduction in the end adds up to a more capable rocket with more weight margin for the actual payload.
And just a day later, the same Nose cone has already received the aerodynamic covers to make the Nose cone as streamlined as possible.
On ascent every rocket has to withstand high amounts of wind resistance.
For this, aerodynamic covers are absolutely essential.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 for example passes maxQ or maximum dynamic pressure,
the point at which the rocket has to withstand the highest amount of pressure from the surrounding atmosphere,
at around 1 minute and 10 seconds into the flight.
At this point the rocket is super sonic at a speed of around 1500 kilometers per hour or around 410 meters per second and an altitude of about
12 kilometers. Even on a very aerodynamically shaped Falcon 9 rocket the Merlin engines throttle down just before maxQ to reduce the pressure on the hull.
Another awesome detail shot shows a recent delivery to the Starship construction site.
Besides a new thrustpuck in the background,
new Starship legs can be seen including the hinge mechanism that will be attached to the Starship engine skirt.
If we compare these with Starship Serial Number 6’s legs though, it becomes clear, that these are still unchanged.
V1.1 legs according to Elon Musk will be the first improvement on Starship legs, making them 60% longer.
These legs look like they’re the same length though, so we’re still waiting for the new ones.
Which Serial Number will have the new legs?
What do you think? As always, tell me I the comments!
SpaceX is not only working on more and more Starship prototypes though.
They’re also increasingly busy building the first version of a Super Heavy booster.
Taken by Mary for NasaSpaceflight.com, these pictures show the progress on Super Heavy Serial Number 1.
SpaceX’s first attempt on building the largest rocket booster ever built.
Fully reusable, capable of automated landing and in the end equipped with 28 Raptor engines.
It’s a segment for the boosters aft lox tank and it’s made of 4 rings and as we can see by the weld marks all over the segment,
it’s got internal bracing to reinforce hull strength.
This makes a lot of sense, as not only the weight of a complete booster will need to be taken care of.
In the end, a Starship will be stacked on top, making the booster endure the entire weight of the stack.
And as predicted, SpaceX is moving fast with this first booster.
Since it took a bit longer for the SpaceX construction crew to finish the High Bay, in which this first booster is being built,
the workers inside the construction tents had some time to build segments in advance.
SpaceX can stack them in quick succession.
And that’s what they’re doing right now.
Super Heavy SN1 is 8 rings high as of recording the episode and more segments are already waiting for the stack.
Now, let’s see, how SpaceX’s fuel production project is coming along.
This is a view of the Boca Chica SpaceX Site through a so-called GIS or geographic information system provided by the state of Texas.
It shows all active and inactive oil and Gas wells of the state including of course Boca Chica.
And as we can see on the Map, there are two gas wells.
One owned by Sanchez oil and gas and one by the Dallas petroleum group.
Both have been inactive for several years and originally, they provided methane gas.
Now, don’t hold your breath. SpaceX could not just use the Methane from these wells.
It would need to be processed before use and that’s actually quite some work.
According to Elon Musk in a first step this is to become a liquid oxygen production site.
As seen in this beautiful shot by RGV aerial photography, SpaceX has recently been busy here.
Terrain grading. Lots and lots of tanks.
There’s something going on. Thanks to the GIS map, we can narrow the two wells down pretty precisely.
One must be at the end of the bend in the road right at the entrance of the site and the other one is right at the end of the road towards the
construction site. So, it must be up here, where SpaceX recently put down concrete foundations.
This leads me to the conclusion, that SpaceX actually might want to use the methane wells sooner than expected.
The three trailers on site are so called fracking trailers.
They hold large amounts of water, which normally is inserted into so called injection points to increase pressure below and get out more gas.
Lots of tanker trucks can be seen on site too and they look like they’re delivering water.
Mary was on site again and took these pictures of recent deliveries.
If there’s anyone out there, who knows what they are for, I’d love to know!
Tell me in the comments!
A large pump assembly was delivered to the site as well.
It’s used equipment, so SpaceX might just want to try something here and is not yet ready to invest money into new equipment.
It’s going to be very interesting to see, what exactly will happen here in the next few weeks.
The background for all this is clear.
If SpaceX can produce liquid oxygen and possibly even methane on site, prices go down even further,
making Starship launches even cheaper than before.
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Imagine, sitting inside a Starship, strapped into the seat on final approach back to planet Earth.
You’ve been in transit for a few months now and the Starship is getting ready for Aerobraking.
A maneuver that enables the Starship to shave off speed using only its heat shield and Earth’s atmosphere.
For the last few weeks you saw Earth get bigger and bigger through the beautiful windows of the nose cone but as the Starship pitches its nose
up at an angle of roughly 70 degrees to give as much resistance area as possible, the now large blue horizon slowly drifts out of view.
Fasten Seat belt lights on, the Starship continues this maneuver for quite some time,
reducing the speed further and further and in return lowering the flight path further down towards Earth.
Due to the deceleration you’re starting to feel up and down again, as the force presses you into the seat.
At some point this aerobraking maneuver turns into a reentry as the atmosphere becomes thicker and thicker.
At this point you’re surrounded by plasma and the Starship heat shield has to endure temperatures of around 5000 degrees Fahrenheit or 2760 degrees
Celsius. This is quite a bit higher than the reentry temperatures from Low Earth orbit, as speeds from a deep space return are much higher.
Apollo 11 for example when returning home from the Moon had to endure these temperatures,
where as A Crew Dragon returning home from the ISS does not exceed 3500 degrees Fahrenheit or around 2000 degrees Celsius.
The view through the nose cone windows is quite spectacular at this point.
Plasma flames running along the nose cone give you a very real indicator of what SpaceX’s engineers had to fight against when designing the Starship.
As the speed slows down further, you start to feel more and more turbulence.
Contrary to a Falcon 9 booster piercing through the atmosphere like a dart,
A Starship has to fight against the Atmosphere quite a bit during its sky dive maneuver to stay on course.
Then comes the famous belly flop maneuver.
Three Raptor engines fire, press you into the seat, as the Starship initially jumps forward and swings around.
You see the Boca Chica Sky swing around and as the final landing burn slows you down rapidly you get pushed into the seat one last time before
you feel and hear the legs touch the landing pad.
The fasten seat belt sign turns of with a typical bing sound.
Thank you for flying with SpaceX.
Thank you Nick, for taking all of us on this beautiful ride.
Check out his twitter and subscribe.
It’s worth it!
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