SpaceX does the first ever Mechazilla Starship stack!
How did it happen? Raptor 2 unveiled!
What are the differences? Future Starship missions this year!
What exactly is SpaceX planning?
Musk finally states facts at the 2022 Starship Update
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
Tonight, it’s almost all about Elon Musk’s latest Starship Update.
It’s been less than 24 hours since the big event in Texas, and we're going to go through all the nitty-gritty little details.
We will piece all the bits together and see what new information we can take out of it.
Before we do that, though, I want to at least talk a moment about what recently happened at Starbase because it's very much worth it!
SpaceX sets the bar when it comes to many things right now.
From reusable orbital-class rocket boosters to the most advanced crew flight and cargo vehicles to serve the ISS,
they've been reinventing the space flight industry for more than a decade now.
Currently, their most significant project, of course, is the Starship.
And even though we try to cover as much of it as possible here at WAI, it is tough to get inside information.
Facts and not speculation. This is where SpaceX's Starship Update events come into play.
Every couple of years, Musk gets in front of the audience to talk about the latest developments, future plans, design changes,
and all sorts of fascinating insight views as to what’s happened and what’s going to happen next at Starbase, Texas, the place,
where SpaceX is currently developing the Starship launch system, pun intended.
There's a tradition attached to Musk's Starship Updates.
Whenever he holds such an official event, SpaceX makes very sure to present their latest progress to the public,
as these events are not just essential for us Space fans.
They're also a big event for stakeholders, investors, and current and future industry partners.
So, SpaceX went all hands on deck again to set the scenery for Musk and his vision of a multi-planetary future for humanity.
They did the first Starship stack utilizing Mechazilla.
And it was awe-inspiring to watch the whole thing play out.
I quietly watched together with the Nerdle on LabPadre’s live cams.
I talked about the orbital launch mount many times before on my channel.
By SpaceX, it is also referred to as stage zero, which is a wordplay referring to a rocket's stages.
The Starship launch and landing infrastructure is highly complex since critical systems such as engine ignition, spin up,
and legs have been taken out of the rocket for reusability and weight reasons.
Seeing all of this work together to accomplish the relatively simple task of stacking the rocket showed once more that Starships really are a completely new concept.
This is what's hidden from our WAI cam view and what happened when the booster was placed on the table.
An inner ring of complex systems, including a ring of hold-down clamps engine connections for spin up and ignition.
All timed perfectly to grab hold of the biggest rocket booster ever built.
We've seen this a few times, and so far, the system seems to work as intended even though it’s a completely new design idea.
What happened next, though, was a first.
Not just for SpaceX or Starbase, but for the entirety of Spaceflight history.
Full-stack means Super Heavy Booster stacked onto the orbital launch table and then Starship stacked on top of the booster to create a 119-meter-tall
tower of stainless steel and Raptor engines.
Even with a regular crane, it's not an easy undertaking.
Utilizing the integration tower and its two large lifting arms, also referred to as Chopsticks, is a whole other story.
But that's precisely what SpaceX did and what they’ll have to practice anyway.
The freshly stress-tested chopsticks attached to the Mechazilla Hardpoints located directly under the Starship forward flaps and performed the
first Mechazilla Starship lift.
Another first for Starbase and the Starship program.
And even though the entire operation took around 100 minutes to conclude, it was an exciting process to watch.
Ship 20 got picked up from the SPMT directly in front of the orbital launch mount lifted up above the booster in less than 20 minutes.
Then the upper quick disconnect and stabilization arm went into place and grabbed hold of Booster 4 in preparation for the stack.
This is done to prevent the booster from moving around while the stack is in process and to stabilize the 119-meter-tall rocket once everything
is in place. After all, this was done, Mechazilla carefully set down the Starship, which by the way, roughly has a dry mass of around 120 tons.
So, what you see there, hanging on the chopsticks in mid-air, has about the same weight as 3 fully loaded semi-trucks,
even when its tanks are empty.
In total, around 320 tons of stainless steel and rocket engines are being placed onto the orbital launch mount here.
Fueled, the weight will go up by another 4600 tons, totaling at just under 5000 tons of wet mass,
which is what Rocket engineers call the weight of a fully fueled vehicle, ready for launch.
All this was not just done for what followed next, but also to train the ground crew and test the systems for upcoming launches.
Once this was done, the stage was set for Elon Musk's Starship Presentation 2022.
WAI cam operator Kevin Randolph aka Chief personally got invited by SpaceX and for all of us as a representative amongst hundreds of space enthusiasts,
media representatives, and Industry personalities.
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And now, without further ado, here’s what we learned from this year’s Starship presentation!
It’s been almost 2 years since the last update.
This is how Musk started his presentation and it’s true.
SpaceX was incredibly busy.
Musk emphasized again, that the space industry still only makes up a very small amount of the entire budget of the United States.
Only 0.36% for 2020 went into funding NASA’s efforts for example.
To turn maybe even half a percent of the US budget into a future that sees humanity venture out into space there’s one invention needed first
according to Musk. A rapidly reusable launch system.
He called it the holy grail breakthrough.
And this has never been accomplished before.
Falcon 9 demonstrated the reuse of a booster and the payload fairing, but that’s it.
It’s far from full reusability.
And that’s what Starships are supposed to accomplish.
Starships would raise the total mass to orbit per year by an almost unimaginable amount.
One Starship, if it would launch three times a week, would be able to accomplish per year, what the whole world does right now.
1 Starship launching three times per day, which is SpaceX’s goal,
would ramp this up to 109500 tons per year and only 10 of them would achieve more than a million tons to orbit per year.
These are numbers, that are hard to fathom.
The plan is to make a Super Heavy booster reusable around every hour,
as it only needs 6 minutes from launch to landing and a Starship would be ready for its next launch after around 6 hours.
Musk said that 1 million tons to low earth orbit per year roughly translates to around 100000 tons to Mars surface.
To achieve a self-sustaining colony on Mars, he estimates around 1 million tons of payload.
Starships will be capable of doing this and that’s what they’re working on.
Musk said that we need to seize the opportunity and do it as quickly as possible.
His next topic was the Starship heat shield and he showed a very interesting picture.
It likely shows a picture of a prototype that hasn’t rolled out of the Starbase tents yet and even at first glance it shows differences.
The spacing between the tiles, the much more precise placement of the Starbricks.
It all comes down to making it robust, reusable and low cost.
One more key factor will be orbital refilling.
Musk emphasized again, that SpaceX already possesses this technology,
as their Dragon capsules regularly dock with the ISS and docking with your own rocket would even be easier.
Next on the list of topics was the Raptor engine.
Raptor 2 is around the corner and Musk confirmed my speculation,
that the second version of the Starship engine is a stripped down and redesigned version of the prototype engine.
The reason for Raptor 1 looking like a huge mess is all the attached sensors and telemetry systems,
needed to get the flight data from a prototype engine.
Musk showed a very interesting video of a Raptor 2 test fire as well.
You can see the sleek looking and much thinner engine and you can also see the number 10 on the nozzle.
This likely means that we’re looking at the tenth Raptor 2 engine ever built here.
The peak thrust ever reached with a raptor 2 so far is 247 tons and so 230 tons in daily use doesn’t sound impossible.
Later on, even 250 tons are on the table.
Right now, SpaceX is at 5-6 engines per week and the milestone for next month is an engine per day.
The animation, SpaceX showed holds some clues to how Mechazilla and Stage Zero as an entirety might change in the coming months.
LED lighting, panels covering the tower, the quick disconnect arm and the chopsticks.
Slight changes in the QD arm setup.
And, no working deluge system on liftoff.
At least no visible one.
Musk even shed some light on upcoming launch schedules for Boca Chica.
The orbital launch is only the beginning.
There will be a couple of Starlink version 2 launches utilizing early Starships.
Even more exciting of course is the NASA human Spaceflight mission.
Astronauts will fly to the Moon onboard Starships.
Dear Moon is still on the schedule as well.
It will take a dozen artists on a loop around the Moon and there will be a future announcement to look forward to.
Musk also said that a test for orbital refilling might happen within the next two years.
The orbital flight still poses a challenge because of the FAA.
SpaceX doesn’t have much insight into the approval process and the only thing they now right now is that there may be an approval in March.
Musk also spoke about the alternative scenario of launching from the Cape.
The environmental assessment approval there has been given years ago and it would only take SpaceX around half a year to achieve launch capability
on the east coast. If the FAA does require even more certification at Starbase after the ongoing investigation, SpaceX will shift to the Cape.
The plan right now is to have one of the sea launch platforms and the Starship pad at Pad 39a ready for a launch by the end of this year.
To draw a conclusion on this year’s Starship Update, we’ve learned that Raptor 2 is under way,
that SpaceX has plans to regularly launch payload this year and that if the FAA does indeed require another full environmental impact study or
EIS on top of the current shorter assessment, SpaceX will likely move their Starship operations towards Florida and Cape Canaveral.
On top of that,
Musk did state that infrastructure and technical readiness for a first orbital launch will likely be achieved at the same time as the FAA approval.
Maybe even in March. This without a doubt is an incredibly exciting year to look forward to and I hope that you enjoyed the presentation as much as I did.
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