This video is sponsored by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to build your amazing
online presence. Hey, Hey Marcus House with you here. Well, there has been no slowdown
with SpaceX’s Starship development sites over the past week. Progress towards the orbital
flight infrastructure is incredible to see each and every day.
SpaceX launched it's 22nd cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station with a
special delivery in the Trunk. And also, some updates from Mars with the little helicopter
Ingenuity having had a little scare with its recent flight.
To kick off this week, I think it is good to acknowledge that it has been one year since
Starship prototype 4 or SN4’s anomaly occurred which was on May 29th in 2020. This anomaly
resulted in the rapid unscheduled disassembly of SN4 with the vehicle exploding on the launch
mount. It had enough force to create a shockwave and at the time I recall a large amount of
skepticism about whether SpaceX could really manufacture tanks in this way. Many thought
this had no chance of success. Well… lets just fast forward through the rest of the
a year shall we? Just one year later we have seen two 150m hops with SN5 and SN6 with both
successfully touching down on the landing pad, and five medium altitude flights then
followed between December 2020 and May 2021. Starship Number 8 flew the highest at an altitude
of 12.5km, along with completing the first major test objective completing a controlled
belly flop return. This prototype along with SN9, SN10 and SN11, flying slightly lower
10km altitude followed, all completing much of their testing well, but ultimately failing
to stick the landing or in the case of SN10, surviving after landing. So although the flight
tests were going smoothly, the landings were problematic. Design changes were already underway
to address these issues and although Starship Number 12, 13 and 14 were in progress, they
were at that point already obsolete. These were all instead dismantled leaving Starship
15 featuring numerous upgrades over its predecessors. This baby then completed all the test objectives
on May 5th just last month, including a smooth touchdown on the landing pad, the first to
fully complete its tests and land without exploding. All of this along with an incredible
amount of construction and preparation at the launch and construction site have happened
in just one year. Just a few comparisons here that show how much has changed at the launch
site thanks to the incredible work by RGV Aerial Photography. This is why we follow
the progress at Boca Chica so closely and also why you join us here every Saturday to
run through it. You right there make this possible for us and the many people involved
in the coverage and enthusiasm behind it. Thank you for subscribing here, sharing and
supporting what we do. So after taking in all that progress over
the last year, where are we now? One of the most common questions I’m still getting
is whether SpaceX still plans to refly Starship 15, to which the answer is… no. Elon Musk
had suggested it could refly, however, that plan was cancelled in preference of making
it a monument instead. It has since rolled back to the Production Site and has been prepared
for display. The three Raptors that were installed for that iconic flight were also preparing
to ship out of Starbase just recently. With Starship 15’s successful landing appearing
to conclude the medium altitude hop tests, SpaceX are now pushing hard for the very first
orbital flight hopefully coming within months. Well... it it technically near orbital as
it will be placed into a trajectory that will have the Starship re-enter in a controlled
manner and gently splash down in the ocean close to Hawaii, only around 6,400 kilometers
away from Boca Chica after having travelled the majority of the way around the globe.
Amazing 3D artists have been making huge strides in preparing this animation. Thanks very much
to Corey here showing the world what this could look like at the same time as partnering
up with a team of other artists. Neopork, Alex Svan, Nick Henning, Sam Krug, and Spaceport3D
were all involved in creating this masterpiece in some way. This has been a monstrous effort.
The Super Heavy Booster will push the Starship well out of the atmosphere very rapidly. After
Main Engine Cutoff, Starship will separate and continue on its way to near orbital velocity.
Meanwhile, the Superheavy will flip and do a boostback burn aiming to splash down in
the ocean roughly 32 kilometers from Boca Chica. After achieving its target velocity
Starship’s engines will shut down leaving it to coast until it begins re-entry. This
re-entry test right here is going to be amazing to witness regardless of the result. Starship
will scream back into the atmosphere just over 27,000 kilometers per hour. After what
we hope will be a successful controlled re-entry with Starship, that will aim to fire up its
engines, flip, and gently splash down on target close to Hawaii. Just incredible work here.
Thanks very much to the entire 3D team that helped create this, especially to Cory for
being the incredible driving force behind this. The link to the full quality video with
incredible audio is in the description along with the links to all the amazing artists
involved. Incredible work! There are a lot of hurdles to jump here though
to get to this flight test. Can SpaceX proceed through these without incident? Time is going
to tell. All the elements are currently being prepared at both the build site and the launch
site for this first historic, milestone flight. Sections of Starship Number 20 which we hope
to be that first orbit capable vessel have already been spotted over the past several
weeks by BocaChicaGal with NASASpaceFlight. Thanks Mary for the terrific insight here.
Along with the Starship, which is the vessel that makes it to orbit, the incredibly massive
booster that is required to push this massive ship out of the atmosphere is also underway.
Because of the huge velocity needed to get into Orbit, the world's most powerful rocket
to ever be created is right here. When I say the most powerful, that is no understatement.
The Saturn V had a liftoff thrust around 3,580 metric tons of force. A very successful vehicle
that has not flown since 1973. Close to half a century ago. The Russian N1 which was more
powerful again had a liftoff thrust of around 4,625 metric tons of force. The Russians attempted
to launch this colossal rocket four times with the last being in 1972. All four failed
with much of the blame being the complexity and limitations of firing the 30 NK15 engines
together. Here we are now near 50 years later creating a rocket with between 29 and 32 engines
and with around 225 metric tons of force per Raptor, this obliterates the total thrust
record at somewhere between 6,525 metric tons of force with the 29 engines up to 7,200 metric
tons of force with 32 Raptors. Now.. wait… that is just over 2 times the thrust of the
Saturn V… What!? Just imagine that! So we have SpaceX’s Super Heavy Booster Number
2 sections spotted that are now being stacked in the High Bay. Now you may be confused why
I just called that booster 2 as it was previously called Booster Number 3. Well over the past
week it seems as though a renaming occurred with the former BN3 becoming BN2, while the
former BN2, the test tank was renamed to BN2.1. This could explain the reasoning behind Elon
Musk saying Booster 2 in his recent twitter post showing it in the high bay along with
the Starship 16 prototype. The superheavy prototype is now standing at 16 rings tall
in the High Bay with its common dome stacked on top of the majority of the liquid oxygen
tank. The test tank, BN2.1 has completed stacking in the Midbay, consisting of a forward and
an aft dome. It was then moved onto the modified stand, and it has already been rolled to the
launch site where numerous tests will be conducted. Also seen during the week was the massive
downcomer connection which fits to the common dome.
we’ll talk more about that in a moment but first a big thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring
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in the description below. So yes, just check out the massive downcomer
for Super Heavy here which connects to the common dome. The common dome of course divides
the main fuel tank structure separating the liquid methane from the liquid oxygen. Just
look at how massive the diameter of that pipe is compared to the downcomer for Starship.
The other end of this of course connects to the manifold that splits and feeds all that
liquid methane to the 29 raptors. I’m happy to report that testing for BN2.1 will indeed
include utilising that new superheavy thrust ram we spotted last week, to push upwards
with the the forces of the 9 inner Raptor engines. That will test the aft dome to verify
the design will withstand that colossal force. We can see here the mounting location for
9 center Raptor engines on this plate to match what we expected from the thrust ram structure.
The other 20 engines will be mounted to a structure on Super Heavy's Aft Dome. This
29 engine configuration was also confirmed by Elon Musk on Twitter adding that Super
Heavy would eventually evolve to 32 engines. ErcX on twitter released this render here
of a possible 32 Raptor layout with a 3-9-20 configuration. Elon Musk replied right here
confirming this and also adding that the “Inner ring of 9 is closer to center 3, as all 12
gimbal together. The revised render here is likely quite close to the expected layout
now. From what we see the outer 20 are essentially mounted right on the edge of the 9 meter wide
vessel meaning that they all hang out over the side. Months ago we were expecting some
kind of skirt that would come down around them however perhaps that may not be the case.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments. Elon Musk said that the new engine layout
greatly improves boost back burn efficiency and also added that the supply chain for the
Raptor is being focused at the production site in Hawthorne, California. Interestingly
however the speed of Raptor production is already pretty crazy. It “is approaching
one every 48 hours”. At this rate, they could have enough engines for a full Super
Heavy set of 32 Raptors after just 64 days, but speed will continue to ramp up. From Hawthorne,
Raptors are then shipped to SpaceX’s Test Centre at McGregor, Texas, where they are
fired to validate the engines ahead of being sent to the launch site in Boca Chica. Assuming
that all engines that are manufactured pass the required tests and that none will need
replacing after a static fire at Starbase, they can produce enough Raptors for each superheavy
every 2 months. Given there have been so many Raptor swapouts in Starship tests, it will
be interesting to see how long it takes for a full set of 29 Raptors to be given the green
light for flight. In preparation for such a flight, construction at the orbital launch
site has proceeded very quickly. Last week we witnessed the rapid rise of the Launch
Integration Tower with two sections going up quickly. Then we have another additional
prefabricated section waiting to be transported from the gas well site to the launch site
shown here, and another that has begun construction. That will make it 5 sections high, plus the
base, and we are estimating a further three sections will be placed after that. This tower
will become the tallest structure in the South Padre Island region standing at around 140
metres tall. The orbital launch pad after fairly low activity
lately has ramped up with these vertical extension segments on top of the existing pillars. I
think new cross beams will be mounted around the sides of this to add further strength
to it. Owe BL here has added this to his animation to show how we believe this will attach in.
On top of these we expect the launch table to sit. This table we’ve been keeping an
eye on for quite some time. There have recently been a lot of intricate additions such as
the installation suspected launch clamp systems that would hold down the SH booster before
liftoff. Thanks to RGV we have the fresh shots of the
rig that is being converted to an Ocean spaceport. Meet Deimos, which as Elon Musk stated, is
under construction for launch in 2022. He said this of course while retweeting this
beautiful 3D render created by Kendall Dirks who has been very busy lately creating works
of art like this. In the near future we could be watching footage of a Starship fueling
up similar to this ahead of a liftoff to orbit. We are still thinking that the liquid methane
and liquid oxygen would sit underneath the deck inside the leg structures. That keeps
the fuel and oxidiser much more protected from a loss of vehicle or accident above.
Although I’m not an expert in such rigs, talking to others that are, we believe that
the ballast systems that these rigs have in place can dynamically compensate for extensive
weight changes over the structure. Although Starship and Super Heavy will be monsters.
The volume of water ballast that these rigs can have are equally as monstrous. Thanks
very much to Kendal there for creating all this amazing eye candy. There is a lot more
coming and you can follow there on Twitter to keep up to date there. The ocean spaceports
are extremely important for a number of reasons. The boosters and returning starships are so
massive that just the noise from sonic booms and raptor ignition would be extremely disruptive
in any populated area. By placing them out in the ocean, disruption can be minimised.
As more landing locations appear around the world, this becomes even more critical. It
may not be as unrealistic as many think to see launches and landings occur almost daily
with the United States Department of the Air Force appearing interested in Starship as
a delivery platform. A new unclassified document specifically states they want to “test the
capability to leverage a commercial rocket to deliver Air Force cargo anywhere on the
Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity”. It doesn’t specifically mention
SpaceX or Starship, but I think we can assume SpaceX is the commercial option they are describing
here. We are not sure how speculative this goal is at this point, but given that spending
in defense is astronomical compared to typical budgets, interesting opportunities may exist
for SpaceX in the near future. On Thursday, SpaceX launched it’s 22nd cargo
resupply mission to the ISS, and its second mission using the cargo dragon version 2.
The payload for this mission included many resources for science, crew and general upkeep
of the International Space Station. Most notably is the first pair of Roll Out Solar Arrays,
which were stored in the trunk of dragon. These Solar arrays will boost the amount of
available energy on the ISS. They are made up of multiple compact solar panels that roll
open, and these will be installed across 2 spacewalks performed by the expedition 65
crew. A total of 6 of these panels are currently planned to be installed.
So yes, on thursday The falcon 9 lifted off from pad 39A at kennedy space centre in florida.
It was a fairly standard ascent. However, after the stage separation, the first stage
of the falcon 9 performed a partial boostback burn. This was done to speed up recovery operations.
Usually spacex would return the booster to the launch site after performing a boost back
burn, however there was not enough propellant in the booster to do this due to the payload.
After the boost back burn, the first stage had a fairly nominal coast and descent before
landing on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. The second stage continued on into
orbit, where the cargo dragon then separated from the second stage and began its trip to
rendezvous with the ISS. Thanks a lot there to Greg Scott for all these beautiful images
taken down at the launch site too. Incredible detail in these photos as always.
Now the launch is out of the way, we hope everything goes well across the rest of the
mission. I can’t wait to check up on the progress of those Roll out solar panels.
Now over to Mars, we have a few interesting developments. As if creating history wasn’t
enough, making the first powered flight on another planet, Ingenuity continues to impress.
Going from demonstration flights to operational support, it was time for flight number six
recently. With cautious and considered maneuvers of increasing complexity and distance, this
little helicopter has far surpassed all expectations and it’s lifespan of 30 days. Rising to
an altitude of 10 meters or 33 feet, Ingenuity travelled approximately 150 meters to the
southwest. It was near the end of this first part of the flight when Ingenuity began to
make speed adjustments and started to tilt to and fro. Data analysis showed roll and
pitch deviations exceeding 20 degrees and wild fluctuations in power usage as the rotors
tried to deal with the situation. This wild flight behavior remained for the rest of the
trip until it managed to land safely, although it was around 5 meters or 16 feet from the
intended landing site. Thanks to Ingenuities robust design it was
able to handle this anomaly which seemed to stem from bad data coming from the navigation
camera. Acting in concert with the onboard inertial measurement unit, the images there
help with the flight. Thankfully though, the last part of any flight stops referring to
the navigation camera data, so Ingenuity was able to straighten up and land safely. This
is one tough little helicopter and it has already provided so much valuable data for
the team as they learn how to fly on MARS. So there we go. .you are all caught up for
the week. Tune back in next Saturday for the latest news on Starship development.
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