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What’s happening at SpaceX’s Starship production site?
How close are we to the first Super Heavy Booster completion and how is NASA’s Space Launch System doing in comparison?
Let’s find out!
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
Let’s talk orbital, SpaceX’s main focus at the South Texas Starbase right now.
How are things coming along? How long will we have to wait for that first orbital Starship flight?
Wenorbit?
Welcome to Labpadre’s 24/7 live cam directly from the SpaceX Starship launch site.
It’s June 13th and the SpaceX crew is doing more heavy lifting.
Frankencrane, the Liebherr 11350 is lifting up another one of the launch support tower segments for stacking.
All of it in preparation for one of the craziest projects the space industry has ever seen.
The first orbital flight of a SpaceX Starship.
It’s a new chapter for the development program currently being run at Starbase.
For the first time SpaceX is striving to reach orbit with the biggest rocket to ever reach orbit.
There are a lot of big words in this.
First time ever, biggest rocket ever, craziest project ever.
Right now, this tower is around 86 meters tall and it will be 122 meters when finished.
Each Segment stacked is around 18 meters tall and the concrete base on its own measures approximately 32 meters in height.
On its own it’s the size of a 7 or 8-storey building.
Cosmic Perspective was on site as well and took this picture.
It shows not one but two tower segments at the launch site and ready for stacking.
As seen, one has already been stacked and the other one is currently waiting in line,
ready to bring the total height of the launch support tower above the 100-meter mark in just 3 month.
Not long anymore and it will be finished.
Owe from SpaceX 3D Creation Eccentric recently made a very fitting comparison for team space.
He compared the Statue of Liberty, from ground level to torch a 93 meters tall copper statue,
gifted by France to the United States in 1886 and erected in New York as one of the most recognized symbols of liberty to the SpaceX launch support
tower when finished. Anyone who’s ever seen the statue of liberty with their own eyes standing on Liberty Island knows that it is large.
Compared to the SpaceX launch support tower though… What a fitting comparison.
Miss Liberty was gifted for reaching independence and for being a symbol of hope to the rest of the world and SpaceX’s tower already is a symbol
of hope as well at least to us space enthusiasts.
If everything goes as planned, the first people to fly to Mars might take the elevator up on this very tower.
They might walk through a crew access arm in this spot to enter that first crewed Starship to fly to Mars.
Historically this might turn into something even bigger than Pad 39A, from which humans left on every single journey to the Moon.
Fingers crossed for SpaceX and everyone working shifts day in and day out on site in the Texan heat.
These people are the true heroes of Starbase.
But why is SpaceX building such a large tower?
Just to reach the top of a stacked Starship?
This is Demo Mission 2 flown by SpaceX in September of last year and it’s a good example for what a traditional Launch Tower has to handle.
It fuels the rocket, gives support before lift off and it’s an access for the crew to enter the rocket.
That’s it.
A Starship launch support tower on the other hand has to do something no other launch tower ever had to do.
It is supposed to catch a falling rocket booster.
And the biggest one that ever fell from the sky too.
Musk’s plan is to catch the booster for the landing.
The benefit is clear. No legs are needed, which makes the booster even more capable as it saves a lot of weight.
The downside though is that this has never been done before.
And it’s not an easy task at all.
Heavy equipment will be needed.
Large counterweights that could hang down inside the tower could soften the catch and take out enormous amounts of energy on a catch attempt.
For this, large pulley systems would be needed.
These pictures were taken by Starship Gazer on site roughly a week ago and they show exactly what would be needed for the integration towers catch
mechanism. A large pulley with four grooves and if we take a closer look, each and every nut on it is lock wired.
That’s the wire attached on the nuts and bolts.
It’s attached in a specific way so that the nuts and bolts can only turn into the direction of tightening.
They can not come loose. This normally is done on parts that are subjected to constant stress and vibrations.
It is to make absolutely sure that no part can fall off or get loose.
This of course is unconfirmed by SpaceX.
The Pulley could also be for another task, but I couldn’t come up with one that would make complete sense.
What do you think? Is this the first part of a booster catch mechanism we were able to spot?
As always tell me in the comments!
I am eager to read your ideas and discuss!
Besides work at the launch site, SpaceX is also making constant progress on the first orbital Starship to take flight next.
This is one of Jack Beyers videos showing the sleeving of the aft dome.
One of the most important parts of the Starship, it will hold 6 Raptor engines.
Three sea level ones and 3 for vacuum flight.
And to power future tests SpaceX is also receiving first Raptor deliveries for future Orbital flights.
Raptor engines 72 and 74 have been spotted on site and each time a new generation of Raptor engines comes in, they look better and better.
These two Raptor engines are 30 numbers apart.
You’re looking at Raptor Number 44 on the left photographed by John Kraus and engine number 74 photographed just recently by Jack Beyer.
Is this even the same engine? Is this even the same design?
The plumbing is almost entirely different.
Fuel and oxidizer turbo pumps look roughly the same but that’s about it.
Everything else has been moved around, made more compact, more streamlined.
And all this in just 30 engines constructed.
Right now, SpaceX is producing one Raptor every 48 hours.
If the next 30 engines produce as much change as the last 30 it will take SpaceX only two months to have an equally large jump in development again.
Of course SpaceX will have to free ze the design at some point.
Having a Super Heavy Booster with 32 slightly different engines would be difficult to fly.
SpaceX is also making good progress on the promised 360-degree High Bar which in the end is supposed to be accessible to the general public at
least on certain occasions. More and more windows are being installed for that 360-degree look over the construction site and the launch site
which is only roughly 2 miles away.
Of course, it likely won’t be possible to watch launches here, but it should still give an impressive view over Starbase and some lovely Starships.
GSE Tank number 5 is under construction as well.
SpaceX is churning through these tanks as if it was nothing and they’re getting closer to completion of the orbital tank farm with each one they’re
sending down highway 4 towards the launch site.
Looking at one of RGV Aerial photography’s pictures from above shows that a total of 8 tanks will need to be installed on site.
One of them is an already delivered Water tank so that leaves us with 7 GSE tanks.
Brendan Lewis’s Progress Diagram gives the latest status in a nice and comprehensive way.
All GSE tanks are either finished and installed or in production.
1 and 2 are already installed.
3 is almost done and at the construction site soon to be ready for the roll out.
4 is currently in the mid bay at the construction site only missing the final stack.
5 just had the aft section sleeved, has the forward section finished and is missing the middle section.
6 and 7 have begun construction but are still missing a lot of parts.
We can also see the progress of SN20, the first orbital Starship and its booster BN2.
SN20 itself is just missing fairing and nose cone.
Everything else is either finished or missing the stacking.
The booster on the other hand is now almost done besides stacking.
Almost all the segments have been finished and are waiting for final assembly.
The reason, why SN20 is seemingly lacking behind is because of two main reasons.
First of all,
the heat shield construction will take some time and will likely delay stacking and secondly the ground test campaign for the booster will likely
be longer than for the Starship upper stage.
29 Raptor engines will need to be tested.
Numerous static fires will be needed to ensure that the construction is good to go.
Likely in phases to make sure nothing goes wrong on this first booster.
We can look forward to an extremely interesting ground test campaign and then a spectacular first orbital flight.
This flight will dictate how the test program continues.
Does everything go well or are there problems that need further fixing?
The Starship Program is not the only mega rocket being built right now.
SLS, the next Moon Rocket built by NASA has seen some substantial progress as well.
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SLS Construction Update
It’s a very cool time to be a space fan right now.
The long drought after Apollo and the Space Shuttle era seems to be gone for good and there are not one but two mega rockets,
trying to reach for the Stars right now.
I talk a lot about SpaceX’s Starship but today I want to take the time and give you a progress update on the second mega rocket being built right
now. The Space Launch System. To be more precise we’re going to take a look at Artemis 1,
the first of many planned Artemis missions to return us to the Moon.
A lot has happened in the past 12 months.
Two giant Solid Rocket boosters have been tested and stacked by now.
Originally thought as a replacement for the Space Shuttle these boosters would have enabled the shuttles to carry an additional 9 tons to low
earth orbit. Now they will find their place in the SLS program.
The booster casings used for SLS are flown boosters from the shuttle era.
This time though the plan is to not recover them again.
This is footage taken inside the Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly building and they show the two mighty Artemis 1 solid rocket boosters being
built segment by segment inside Highbay 3.
They’re now side by side waiting for an important missing piece.
The SLS Core stage. A 65-meter-tall Liquid hydrogen and Liquid oxygen main tank rivaling a SpaceX Starship Super Heavy booster in size.
It has arrived at Kennedy Space center in April via the Pegasus barge coming from Stennis Space Center where it successfully passed its test campaign.
All in all, the campaign went smoothly involving a green run full duration burn test,
which had to be repeated but went smoothly on the second try.
It’s not an easy task to handle such a large rocket stage.
Contrary to SpaceX, who build Starships in a vertical position,
NASA has to go from horizontal to vertical and back again multiple times during the lifetime of such a core stage.
This time though the lift is final.
On June 11th, NASA finally performed the vertical lift operation and mated the core stage with the two solid rocket boosters.
It has something majestic to see this happen, knowing that In November of this year, so only 5 months from now,
the window opens that this rocket will take off from Pad 39b.
What’s left now. What steps need to be done so that Artemis I can take flight?
After the booster stacking and the Core Stage delivery, we have two steps done now and about 70% of the rocket assembled.
The next step will be to stack the vehicle stage adapter.
That is the part that holds core stage and upper stage together and is responsible for the separation of the two in flight.
After that comes step 4. The upper stage, in this case the interim stage is being put in place on top of the staging adapter.
It is a small upper stage which will be replaced on later Artemis Missions by the exploration upper stage.
At least that’s the current plan.
Funding is a problem here. SLS is very expensive.
Step 5 will then bring the Orion stage adapter.
Similar to the launch vehicle stage adapter it is used to hold in this case the upper stage and the Orion spacecraft together and it’s also responsible
for separating them in orbit. And finally, once all this is done,
the preassembled Orion Spacecraft including the launch abort tower is stacked on top to crown the stack.
That’s it. Moon Rocket done. All of this will happen in the next few months assuming there is no further delay.
A launch is currently planned for between November 2021 and March 2022.
It all depends on how smoothly the first-time integration testing and checkout proceeds.
Fingers crossed for NASA and Artemis I. Despite all the talk about price it will be a joy to see it finally fly.
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