What?! Nope, not good.
My name is Felix and I am your host to today's episode of What about it?!
What you just saw was Starship SN4 exploding.
It's a reminder that prototypes love exploding and will do everything possible to make it happen.
So what Spacex's approach to all this with their first orbital launch?
Let's dive right in!
Starship updates
SpaceX is taking its slow. You might want to jump out of your seats and be disappointed that there wasn't any orbital launch yet,
but there are good reasons for it.
The destack is confirmed. SpaceX has used the weekend to lift Ship 24 down again and to put some more work into preparations.
Some tasks are left before a full wet dress rehearsal, so a full launch rehearsal just without the ignition or a full static fire.
Musk answered a tweet from Chris G from NASASpaceFlight: "We are proceeding very carefully.
If there is a RUD on the pad Starship progress will be set back by roughly 6 months." Since the reply,
NASASpaceFlights article expecting a static fire and a wet dress rehearsal soon got rewritten and rightfully so.
SpaceX needs to be very careful about what to do next.
Remember this one: it's SN4,
a very early SpaceX Starship test article that basically just featured a tank section and a half done engine section,
minus everything else and this explosion occurred, when it was almost not fueled.
The tanks were practically empty.
Now imagine 260 metric tons of liquid methane and 1000 tons of liquid oxygen in the Starship,
and another 800 tons of liquid methane and 2 800 tons of liquid oxygen in the booster.
Right next to each other. Wanting to react so badly.
If something went wrong the Starship and the booster wouldn't even be the worst loss.
It would be terrible but everything surrounding the Starship getting destroyed would be even worse.
Mechazilla the giant 143 meter tall launch Tower and the 19 meter tall launch mount under it.
The sizeable orbital fuel Farm is just a few meters from the rocket.
All this would set SpaceX back at least half a year, if there were an anomaly with a fully fueled Starship stack.
My friend, Mauricio from RGB Aerial Photography,
released a video in 2021 showing the progress SpaceX made from the famous dirt Hill to what it is today.
It is almost unbelievable to see these pictures.
There has been an incredible amount of work put into all of this.
If this were seriously damaged the wait would be even longer.
Six months might even be an understatement.
So some articles need to be rewritten and some more work needs to ensure that everything has been properly checked before the next step.
And since Starbase never sleeps, work is already ongoing.
Especially the orbital launch Mount or OLM is seeing more work now.
Pictures like this are what make me feel confident though that SpaceX will do a full test with ship 24 and booster 7 relatively soon.
It's a traffic jam of liquid propellant trucks right next to the truck terminal at the orbital fuel farm.
SpaceX is getting huge amounts of fuel delivered these days.
Maybe 4 680 tons? Who knows? One thing is for sure: a full fuel for two things.
A wet dress rehearsal and a launch.
Thank you Jessica! If you don't know her channel yet go check it out!
The link is in the description.
Now before we go on, take a moment to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel!
The WAI team will love you for it.
Thank you! On we go with some news about the production pipeline.
It's ramping up. These are the nose cones of ship 27 28 and 29 in various stages of completion.
SpaceX is hammering them out at a speed we haven't seen yet.
No matter what tent we look into right now.
More and more sophisticated prototypes can be seen everywhere.
More and more design changes can be seen and the production quality is light years away from what all this started with.
Here's a trip down memory lane for you.
These pictures of Starship Mark 1 are not even three years old.
Mind-blowing how fast SpaceX has brought all this up to a whole new level of Rocket Construction.
Compare this to Ship 25, which is inside the Mid Bay at the production site right now and looks almost ready to go.
Booster 9 and 10 inside the Mega bay are making great progress too.
SpaceX certainly has the means to do a lot of test launches in quick succession once 24 has flown for the first time.
Road closures were set for yesterday and today as of recording the episode, so fingers crossed, SpaceX keeps on testing.
Now let's jump to Iceland, where Skyrora attempted to launch their first rocket.
Space is hard. You're looking at Skyrora's Skylark L sub-orbital rocket on their launch pad in Iceland and on October 8th they launched it.
According to Skyrora, the rocket experienced an anomaly short after launch and crashed into the Norwegian sea, roughly 500 meters from the pad.
Given that this was a debut launch for the young company, success wasn't expected.
Space is hard and it's rather normal that a first launch doesn't go entirely as planned.
Severe storms and freezing temperatures at the launch site in the days heading towards the launch didn't make the operation easy.
No people or wildlife were harmed and Skyrora has begun an investigation to learn from the failure.
Skyrora has big plans. This is their large Skyrora XL rocket performing a second stage static fire in August.
22.7 meters tall and capable of lifting up to 315 kilograms to low Earth orbit,
Skyrora XL will be the UK's and Europeans answer to rockets like Electron from Rocket Lab.
Good luck on the next attempt, WAI is rooting for Skyrora!
Speaking of Electron, Rocket Lab has shipped the package to the US.
Electron has arrived in the U.S.
To be precise a Rocket Lab electron rocket has arrived at the company's Virginia Launch Complex 2 in preparations for its first launch from U.S
soil at Virginia spaces Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, within NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.
Launch Complex 2 is a significant milestone for Rocket Lab.
Three years in the making. Plan to launch Rocket Lab's Electron rocket and later on the Neutron rocket with the new and fully reusable rockets
production complex in Virginia as well, this first launch is only the beginning of a much larger plan.
Encouraged by NASA's recent progress in re-certifying its autonomous flight termination unit software,
which is required to enable Electron launches from Virginia, Rocket Lab has scheduled the mission from Launch Complex 2 in December 2022.
Peter Beck and Rocket lab are about the only one seriously chasing Spacex's plan of a fully reusable rocket at this time,
and I am extremely excited to see progress being made on the U.S side of things.
On we go with another rocket failure.
The Epsilon rocket launched six times in total since September 14th of 2013, 24.4 meters tall, three stages,
entirely solid rocket motor propelled and capable of lifting 700 kilograms to low Earth or 590 into a Sun synchronous orbit.
And it failed shortly after the launch.
The reason is still unknown but JAXA pulled the trigger and activated the flight termination system shortly after the second stage cut off.
All a payloads were lost. Another good example of building rockets being a difficult task.
Epsilon is soon to be replaced by Epsilon S and an advanced and redesigned version of the solid motor rocket.
As its first stage it will use a solid rocket booster from the not yet launched Japanese H3 rocket, further lowering the cost per launch.
Did you like the episode so far?
And are you still looking for a good Christmas gift?
Speaking of reducing cost our WAIwear merchandise shop is offering free standard shipping from October 19th to the 23rd in the US.
Grab yourself the new Becoming Multi-planetary shirt, featuring a design by Tony Bela!
Now let's talk SLS again, or better DST!
Don't know what that is? Let's dive right in!
Everyone watching my episodes likely knows what SLS stands for.
It's NASA's Space Launch System, an arguably outdated rocket, lacking any reusability aspects, but still heavily in production.
Now NASA has announced that a new company will provide them with up to 20 SLS Rockets.
DST or Deep Space Transport formed on June 6th and largely kept a secret to the public,
is a newly created joint venture between Boeing and Northrop Grumman.
The two largest contractors for SLS hardware.
And under NASA's EPOC or Exploration Production and Operations Contract, they've closed the door to everyone else.
Securing a contract likely worth several billion dollars to produce SLS rockets.
Wow, yeah that's something. Closely aligned with Aerojet Rocketdyne, who supply the Rs-25 engines, this contract sets it in stone.
SLS is going to launch many more times in the future.
On October 12th NASA stated that one private company was trying to offer NASA hardware for future exploration missions,
whose identity was redacted in the justification documents.
I quote:
"Analysis of this submission yielded no additional information or capabilities which would change NASA's intent to award a sole source contract
for the EPOC requirements to DST.".
Now since the name was redacted, we will likely never know which company offered their service,
but if we look at the requirements for the job,
it states that the rocket must be capable of delivering 42 tons of hardware to the Moon on a single vehicle.
The problem is though that no other rocket uses SLS hardware.
Don't get distracted by the beautiful animation in the background, just a placeholder no connection here.
Since a Starship would not be able to use existing SLS launch infrastructure, the investment would be lost.
That's largely what NASA bases the decision on.
Strange new world, where Starships will launch next to an SLS.
Now I want to thank Incogni for sponsoring today's episode.
What do you do if the data you leave on the internet with every wizard goes rogue?
What do you do if it works against you?
You get Incogni! Every time you use Google or any other search engine, so-called data brokers collect information about you.
That's completely normal and most of the time even useful, but what if there is a leak?
If one of those data brokers loses control?
What if all the information about you goes to everyone willing to pay or even steal it?
In that case you better find a good fix.
Ever wonder why you get so much spam mail every day or why a company you've never talked to seems to know everything about you?
It's because data brokers are not playing Fair, they don't clean up the mess they create.
Governments have given you the right to get the data deleted, but there are so many places where your data can be found,
it would take years to get it deleted by sending emails and requesting deletion.
The internet never forgets, right?
Not entirely. You just need the means to fix a broken system.
Incogni helps you protect your privacy and takes your personal data off the market by reaching out to data Brokers on your behalf,
requesting your personal data removal and even dealing with their objections.
Fully automated, system fixed.
Create an account, grant the right to work for you, kick back and watch Incogni work!
Reports about success included.
And they are so confident that you even get a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The first 100 people to use my promo code Felix at the link in the description will get 20% off Incogni.
Protect your privacy and help What about it?!
at the same time? incogni.com/Felix.
That's it for today. If you want to get even smarter about space and rockets, watch this video next to continue the journey.
Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you again in the next episode!