SpaceX getting ready for Raptor ignition on Booster 7. Mechazilla 2 at the Cape is close to stacking.
NASA SLS gets green light for Moon shot!
Let’s dive right in!
My name is Felix, and I am your host for today's episode of What about it.
It’s the perfect time to be a space enthusiast.
Two mega rockets are nearing their first launch.
The race between SpaceX’s Starship and NASA’s is at the finish line and we’re here to witness it all!
Starship Updates
Jumping right into today’s Starship Updates, SpaceX is working towards their most important goal yet for the Starship development program.
Twice. This segment of What about it is slowly changing.
Changing into something we already had before, when the old Cocoa Starship development site was still operational.
And you can tell, how far SpaceX has come since then.
This is a Starlink satellite dispenser and it is being lowered into Ship 25’s payload section.
It is the structure inside the payload bay of a Starship,
responsible for holding the Starlink Satellites in place on the ascent and for pushing them down and out of the very narrow slit-like payload door when in orbit.
This is specialized equipment.
This dispenser will only be able to do one thing.
I talked about an idea two years ago.
"This would mean that the Cargo Starships are made of two separate parts: an engine section and a fairing section.
The same we already see in the prototype process right now.
Those two halves then would be interchangeable.
This would basically make the Sstarship the swiss pocket knife of rockets."
I called it the swiss army knife Starship.
What if SpaceX would make different fairing sections for different tasks?
I went wild with the idea. How about an asteroid miner Starship with special gear in the front?
How about a station builder or a tanker?
It seems I wasn’t too far off with my idea.
Ship 24 and likely many after it are a special variant of Starships.
PEZ Starships. Only capable of doing one task.
Transporting and deploying Starlink satellites.
It’s hard to overstate, what big of a deal this actually is.
Name another rocket that was designed for one payload only.
The whole upper stage is only capable of one task.
This is not the Starship that will get us to the Moon or to Mars.
Back then I speculated, that SpaceX even might put some sort of connector in between the upper stage tank section and the tool, as I called it.
The modified fairing section. What do you think?
How many variants will we see?
Go wild and give me your ideas for variants in the comments!
SpaceX is also preparing to utilize their can crusher for another test run.
On June 16trh they moved the impressive-looking top part out to the launch site.
And this test tank will see its big moment soon.
Its SpaceX designation is B7.1.
SpaceX has its own department at Starbase for these tanks.
The test tank team. Test tanks like B7.1 are built to validate different designs and construction methods.
Different steel thicknesses, and different tank dome designs.
All these new ideas need to be put to the test before they can be implemented in later Starship designs.
So, what does the can crusher actually do?
How does it work? Owe from SpaceX 3D creation eccentric has us covered with one of his ultra-accurate animations.
Can Crusher is just the name we Starship fans gave to this contraption.
Its actual name would be the Max Q test rig.
And this already tells you much more about its purpose.
A test tank is lifted onto the base of the machine.
Then the top part we saw in Chief's footage is put on top and the ropes connect the top pat with the base.
And those two parts pull towards each other while pushing the tank at the bottom.
It’s a bit hard to see with the tank on it, so let’s take that out for a second.
Now you can see, what’s going on under the tank.
Hydraulic rams simulate thrust from the booster's engines, while the top part gets pressed down with the ropes on the outside.
So, the rig tests simulated engine thrust and Max Q pressure at the same time,
giving the SpaceX engineers very realistic feedback on the behavior of the tank at Max-Q conditions.
Max-Q of course refers to the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure a Rocket experiences shortly after lift-off.
It’s the point at which atmosphere thickness and vehicle speed culminate,
creating the largest amount of force on the vehicle during the entire flight.
While all this is in progress at the same time, SpaceX is finding time to Start the final segment of Super Heavy booster 7’s test campaign.
Static fires. Booster 7 has visited the launch site before.
The big difference now is that it has 33 Raptor 2 engines installed under its engine skirt.
And there’s only one reason for this.
Static fires are incoming. First one engine at a time.
Later all of them.
Closures are scheduled from the 27th to the 29th as of recording this episode.
Those could be the days you should mark on your calendars for Super Heavy static fires.
The test windows stretch from 10 am to 10 pm, which could be an indicator of the static fires.
These tests take a lot of preparation time.
In general, a surge of workers coming from SpaceX facilities all over the country can be seen right now.
Work on the Starfactory is progressing fast.
Foundations are being laid for future mass production.
At first, we’ll likely see many Starlink Starships leave these factory halls.
Money needs to be made. Starships need to be profitable.
Now, that the FAA has at least green-lit Starbase itself with 75 tasks to do before a launch license can be requested,
SpaceX has the approval it needed.
Remember how I said twice when talking about SpaceX’s most important goal for the Starship development program in the beginning of this video?
This is why. The Starship Updates segment is finally back to two locations.
Starship Florida is in full swing.
This is Sean or Planetdeimos from Twitter on a nightly visit to the VAB.
And this is the team from Spaceflight Now, filming the same scene.
It happened roughly 14 miles away from my front door at the NASA Vehicle Assembly building on June 22nd.
In one week SpaceX rolled out two segments for the second Mechazilla.
The concrete base for the tower is already in place and stacking should begin shortly with a Liebherr LR11350 crane already in place at Pad39A as well.
And it’s not the only progress.
This is a picture sent to me by Noisemaker and it shows a part for the Kennedy Space Center Mechazilla Chopsticks.
The giant steel arms attached to the Starship Launch Tower are responsible for lifting and catching boosters and Starships during and after a launch.
He showed up at our recent Jetty Park meet-up and we had a talk about how fast SpaceX’s progress at Kennedy Space Center is right now.
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Artemis 1 Update
SpaceX isn’t the only team getting ready for big milestones.
After decades of development, SLS, NASA’s Space Launch System is getting ready for the Moon shot.
This is it. The Space Launch System.
Not in its largest configuration, as the proposed extended exploration upper stage is still missing, but that won’t be needed for the first flight.
Artemis 1. It underwent its fourth wet dress rehearsal at Kennedy Space Centers Pad 39B on June 20th.
Not everything went perfectly smoothly.
A wet dress rehearsal is a simulated launch attempt.
Everything needed for a launch is performed step by step as if it was launch day.
The plan was to stop the countdown at t-9 seconds.
This is when, on a real launch, the main engine ignition occurs.
The countdown was stopped at T-29 seconds instead.
This was due to a modified timeline the team agreed on earlier that day.
They detected a leak at the quick disconnect for the core stage hydrogen.
To proceed with the test until T-29 seconds data was masked so that the internal flight computer would not shut down the sequence.
NASA stated after the rehearsal, that this was a minor issue.
This was the last wet dress rehearsal before the launch.
Next, SLS will be rolled back into the VAB, likely on June 27th.
After that, preparations for the launch will begin.
NASA is still confident that a launch can happen no earlier than late August and the launch window lasts until mid-September.
Artemis 1 will send an uncrewed Orion capsule around the Moon and return it back to Earth.
This will pave the way for Artemis 2, which will see a crew of 4 Astronauts embark on a 10-day flight around the Moon.
Currently slated for no earlier than May 2024 Artemis 2 will be the first time Astronauts reach the Moon after the Apollo program ended with Apollo
17’s landing on December 19th of 1972 almost 50 years ago.
SpaceX Tripple Launch
Jumping back to SpaceX I’d like to mention a very special weekend.
June 17th to June 19th. And I’m actually not talking about 3 full days.
Just the time between June 17th at 12:09 pm and June 19th at 12:27 am.
That’s 1 day, 12 hours, and 18 minutes.
Three launches in 36 hours. Starlink 4-19, SARah-1 and Globalstar FM15.
One from Pad 39A, one from Vandenberg, and one from SLC41.
I was of course present at both the launches from Kennedy Space Center.
On June 19th,
so after the Jetty Park fan Meet-up we went there again just before midnight and watched Globalstar FM15 go up in the middle of the night while
celebrating my friend Galen’s 42nd birthday.
That’s a birthday candle with style.
Happy Birthday, Galen!
Besides demonstrating its know-how once again by launching three Falcon 9 rockets from three different pads with zero problems within 36 hours,
SpaceX also created the best ever landing video of a Falcon 9 on a drone ship in the history of the company.
How?
Starlink. Crystal clear 4k video from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and a booster landing we’ve never seen so crips and clear.
This was the thirteenth landing of Booster B1060.
Let me show you the difference between any other rocket and a Falcon 9 rocket.
GPS III on June 30th, 2020,
Starlink L11 on September 3rd of 2020,
Starlink L14 on October 24th of 2020,
Tuerksat 5a on January 8th of 2021,
Starlink L18 on February 4th of 2021,
Starlink L22, March 24th, when I turned 41 in 2021.
Starlink L24, April 29th, 2021,
Transporter 2, June 30th, 2021,
Starlink Group 4-3, December 2nd, 2021,
Starlink Group 4-6, January 19th, 2022,
Starlink Group 4-9, March 3rd, 2022,
Starlink Group 4-14, April 21st, 2022
and now Starlink Group 4-19, June 17th, 2022.
That’s the difference between SpaceX and any other launch provider in the world.
SpaceX collects data from every flight they perform to improve their rockets further and further.
The same goes for all of us. Lots of data points help everyone improve every day.
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It happens. All. The. Time.
In that case, you have a problem.
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It’s because data brokers are not playing fair.
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