"And this isn't very well understood publicly.
I'm a little surprised we don't talk more about it."
We’re weeks away from an orbital Starship flight.
SpaceX has greatly increased the size of their second Starbase in Florida,
Gwynne Shotwell is openly speaking of one Starship per day and much more!
Let’s dive right in!
My name is Felix, and I am your host for today's episode of What about it.
We’re on the final stretch towards an orbital Starship flight.
Only weeks away, SpaceX is making the last preparations for a 33 Raptor static fire orchestra,
Ship 24 has survived a rigorous test parkour and Florida is getting ready for Mechazilla stacking.
When will we see the Orbital Starship Launch?
Starship Updates
The SpaceX Starbase in south Texas is preparing for its biggest milestone yet.
An orbital test flight of their Starship and Super Heavy next-generation launch vehicle.
It’s a prototype. An early design of a radically new rocket concept.
Fully and rapidly reusable and at the same time, mass-producible.
Not an easy task.
And SpaceX does not want to leave much to chance.
Rigorous testing is the key and ship 24 is the victim.
Three cryogenic tests including thrust simulation have been performed just in the past week.
Fueling, pressurizing to max flight pressure, pressing hydraulic rams against the thrust dome,
simulating the lift-off force inflicted on the thrust structure come launch day.
And it seems that Ship 24 held up to the task after SpaceX fixed a header tank pressurization pipe issue inside the fairing section.
Once these tests were done, SpaceX rolled Ship 24 back towards the production site and into the Highbay.
The next step? Analysis. After all the testing activity, SpaceX likely wants to check out the results.
Are there visible problems? How did the prototype hold up in detail?
And after that? It depends on the results of the checks.
But if everything is fine, Heat shield fixes, engine installation, and rollback to the launch site for static fires.
Now, you might wonder, wasn’t Booster 8 inside the High Bay?
How’d Ship 24 fit in there?
Booster 8 moved inside the Mega Bay on June 6th and is now continuing its stacking process.
The common dome section, so the part connecting both main Methane and oxygen tanks,
is already stacked and the second orbital booster is moving up the milestone list fairly quick.
There’s a reason for SpaceX’s increasing speed.
The final FAA decision is here.
They found no significant impact of decision for the SpaceX Super Heavy Launch Vehicle program in Boca Chica.
What does this mean for SpaceX?
In the end, it means that they have a green light for their operations in Boca Chica.
Mechazilla, the OLM, and the orbital tank farm are green-lit by the FAA.
This means they are allowed to use them for future launches.
Of course, this can be opposed in court and it’s also not to be confused with a launch permit.
This is given separately by the FAA.
But, as soon as SpaceX is ready for a launch or as soon as they can see when that will be,
they now actually can ask for a launch permit out of Boca Chica and for their Starships.
This is great news. SpaceX can finally proceed.
Static fires next! Then launch readiness!
But what does that actually mean?
Launch readiness? Let’s do a short deep dive into one of those systems that will need to perform perfectly come launch day.
Ryan Hansen, whom I met at Starbase earlier this year,
was busy producing some shockingly accurate renders of how the Starship orbital launch mount will work in detail.
In particular, I want to talk about this.
The orbital launch mount has 20 of these and they are the heart of what's going on inside the orbital launch table,
so the upper most part of the launch mount itself.
If they don’t work properly and at just the right timing, Starships will never reach orbit.
Sometimes it's down to the little things.
It can be divided into three major components.
The cover plate. The hold-down clamp and the engine connector.
This is what it looks like when they’re moving.
Responsible for holding the super-heavy booster in place and for starting up the outer ring of Raptor engines on lift-off,
they might be the most complicated parts to get right.
As soon as a Super Heavy booster, weighing in at around 250 tons gets lowered down into the orbital launch mount,
all 20 arms move into position and once the booster comes to a rest,
the hold-down clamps grab the booster and the engine connectors dock with each of the 20 outer engines.
This is the first critical moment.
All the arms have to be at just the right height so that the booster is resting on them in a perfectly level position.
All the connectors need to correctly attach to the interfaces on the engines.
There can not be a single leak.
This aspect will first be tested thoroughly once booster 7 is ready for a static fire, which should be rather soon.
The second critical moment is the booster release.
Once the engine connectors have done their job of spinning up 40 turbopumps of the outer ring of engines and once ignition of all 33 Raptor engines
is confirmed, the hold-down clamps will release the booster.
And this is where it gets critical.
First of all, the engines can char up the whole assembly if the 20 cover plates are not closed once the engines move past.
This would already be bad. What’s even worse, though,
is that these arms would hit the engine bells if they’re not retracted while the booster is moving past them.
Musk once replied to a tweet by Starship Gazer, saying that this launch mount is not easy to build.
This is the kind of stuff he referred to.
If you want to build something completely new, you have to try out new things to get the job done.
And if you want to build the largest rocket ever built and make it fully and rapidly reusable and on top,
if that and maybe most importantly if you want to make it mass-producible, you need to come up with some great ideas to make it work.
SpaceX’s efforts at Kennedy Space Center are ramping up.
Julia Bergeron from Nasa Spaceflight was up in the air, bringing us some fantastic new pictures of what’s going on in my new neighborhood.
SpaceX is fast. Six out of six orbital launch mount pillars are up already and if you pay close attention to the picture,
you can see tracks for a large crane on site.
SpaceX is in full swing on building Mechazilla two.
And it has some updates up its sleeves.
This picture,
originally posted by Lavie154 on Twitter on April 22nd shows one of the orbital launch mount legs and flame diverter covers can clearly be seen
on one end. These will likely be on all 6 legs.
The update here is that SpaceX right now is busy attaching these kinds of flame diverter plates onto the orbital launch mount legs at Starbase.
So, this is an updated design.
It likely wasn’t even in the construction plans when they put the OLM legs at Starbase in place.
At the main Starship production facility at Roberts Rd.
more and more columns for the Star factory can be spotted.
Stephen Marr created some impressive aerial footage.
And right next to the Starfactory construction, six segments for the new Mechazilla can be seen as well.
Lolomatico 3D and 2Legit2Quit 3D have created a nice overview for us at WAI to better keep track of the progress.
Segments 1 to 6 are built. Segment 7 is being assembled right now.
As said, all six legs for the orbital launch mount have been poured as well and are curing right now.
This process of concrete hardening can take some time.
And there is no sign of the orbital launch table yet, but I’ll keep a close eye on it for you as always.
SpaceX is taking a different approach with the Mechazilla 2.0 assembly.
They know a lot more about building it compared to the first version at Starbase, Texas.
It seems like they’re fleshing out the different segments much more before stacking them at Pad39A.
This will speed up the construction greatly,
as fleshing out the tower while it’s still in segments likely is much easier compared to working at great height while it’s already stacked.
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On June 6th, SpaceX also filed for a new construction permit at Roberts Road.
Starbase 2 is getting bigger. 60000 Square Meters instead of 47500.
One of the main changes is the second high bay in the new plans.
Remember the slide from Elon's presentation I showed to you on the last episode?
Already outdated. That’s SpaceX.
It showed one high bay. Sushifoxx made some renders of what it should look like now.
A larger footprint and two high bays.
SpaceX means it.
I recently watched a new talk with Gwynne Shotwell.
I do love myself a good Shotwell interview.
There are not nearly enough of those out there.
I’ll put a link in the description for those who want to watch the full thing, but what I want to show you is this.
"Can we produce a rocket that can get to orb, like really produce Falcon.
We produce you know between 7 and 11 Falcon first stages per year.
We're producing a second stage every week right now, but what we want to be able to do is produce a rocket a day.
Producing five a year isn't going to get you there.
You really want to launch hundreds on that cyanotic period with Mars when you're taking people there."
One per day. That’s almost exactly what I calculated around half a year ago.
And that’s what those two Starbases are supposed to achieve.
Earlier in the interview, she said another very important bit.
"So we need to have a production system build rockets much like a production system to build cars."
Building the machine that builds the machine.
That’s what all this is about.
SpaceX knows how to build rockets.
After all, they’re already building the most advanced ones in the world.
So, their focus right now is on mass production more than anything else.
If you want to build a colony on Mars, it won’t be enough to send 2 or 3 every time Earth and Mars align for a launch window.
If possible, you want to send dozens or even hundreds at a time.
Elon tweeted this out on June 11th.
It shows Booster 7 inside the Mega Bay and with a full complement of Raptor 2 engines.
They’re done. All mounted and ready for static fires.
And they didn’t install all the Raptor 2 engines they had either.
This picture was taken by high-ranked NASA representatives on June 10th inside one of the large production tents at Starbase.
There’s a booster engine section visible in the background and in front you can see two new Raptor 2 engines, waiting to be installed.
Likely for Ship 24, it shows that SpaceX isn’t scraping together every Raptor they can get.
It’s unknown, how many Raptor engines Hawthorne can produce right now,
but this gives hope that the next booster might not take as long as the last did.
And they might actually need those Raptors too.
Now that the FAA has finally green lit Starbase, Texas, we’re in for lots of launches this year.
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Today’s supporter shout out goes to Chief.
Thank you for enduring the searing heat heatwave in Texas, bringing us fresh pictures and videos literally every day.
He's making a very important part of our show possible.
If you ever see him out there at Starbase, say hi from everyone in the community!
Thank you so much Chief, we love you!