SpaceX is creating a monster! Why?
Because this beast is breaking the rocket scale.
Today I’ll show you why!
My name is Felix, and I am your host for today’s episode of What about it!?
And today we’ll dive into the belly of the beast that is SpaceX’s super Heavy Booster 7. Chief produced some incredible and so far,
unseen footage we’ll dissect together.
After that, let’s look at the Axiom 1 launch and docking in detail and what it means for the spaceflight industry!
So let’s dive right in!
Starship Updates
SpaceX is working 24 hours a day at Starbase right now.
Booster 7 at the launch site and Booster 8 and Ship 24 at the production site.
That’s the main focus. At least of what we can see through WAI cam operator Chief’s point of view.
And these are the pictures I wake up with every day right now.
Stunning footage of a new kind of rocket booster supposed to send us to Moon and Mars in the near future.
SpaceX’s Super Heavy. The name fits.
9 Meters diameter. 69 meters tall.
33 Raptor engines blasting out 3400 tons of fuel in under 3 minutes.
In comparison, a Falcon 9 booster has roughly 400 tons of fuel.
So, one single super heavy booster has around 8.5 times the propellant on board compared to a Falcon 9 booster.
But only a little under 4 times the number of engines.
Everything is bigger on a Starship.
Now you might ask, what all the spaghetti under that booster is supposed to do.
That’s new. We didn’t get these kinds of views yet.
That’s because there hasn’t been a booster yet that was brought to the launch site without the engine covers.
This is a Super Heavy booster without the skirt and it’s not even blushing!
We can basically look straight at its private parts.
The engine connectors and gimbal parts.
Taking a closer look reveals the whole engine setup.
An outer ring of 20 engines. Fixed in place and without a gimbal system.
Those are the boost engines. They are solely for the needed push to orbit.
Static, unable to steer and just blasting for around 3 minutes.
They do not need flexible connections as they don’t move, so it’s static pipes with just a very small flexible end.
Then come the inner engines and it gets much messier.
13 engines and likely more than 50 connectors.
Methane and oxygen inlet. Spin up inlet.
Hot gas inlet. Autogenous pressurization and backflow.
Electrical connections. Sensors and telemetry.
At first it does look like a mess, but everything here makes sense and has a purpose.
And actually, this is a rather clean setup for a rocket.
It’s just that there are so many SpaceX Raptor 2 engines that need to be fed and controlled by the avionics.
Mid last year Elon Musk tweeted a picture of a Super Heavy Thrust dome from the inside.
So, this is what’s sitting on the inside of Booster 7. Well, actually it’s even messier,
as this still is a 29-engine setup and booster 7 already has the new 33 engine setup.
So, add another 4 engine mounts with all the needed connections to this engineering masterpiece and you have booster 7.
Haha! That thing is crazy!
As a fun fact you might not have noticed that there were 19 SpaceX workers inside this single engine section at the moment the picture was taken.
19 and you don’t even notice it much.
Imagine there would be 19 people in the room you’re sitting in right now while watching this.
Crowded, right? That’s how big this thing is.
It just doesn’t come across very well on your screen and in the pictures.
I’ve been to Starbase twice now and of course I had this insane wow effect the first time I saw a Starship and a booster.
The second time, though, the feeling was exactly the same.
It didn’t fade away. In reality these prototypes are so much bigger than you seem to think when looking at this footage.
They’re true monster rockets. I’ll be at Starbase again shortly after our move to Florida.
First week of May, if you want to come down and chat with me and Chief.
It’ll be my third visit. It’s a bit like a drug.
Once you’ve been there, you just can’t wait for your next hit of SpaceX Starship glory.
It’s a unique project and it get’s even more unique with every day that passes at Starbase.
Let them know in the comments!
I’ve heard from quite a few of the SpaceX Starbase workforce that they watch my episodes regularly.
Show them some love. They’ll read it!
I think I can speak for many here.
If there are any of the SpaceX workers watching this right now, look into the comment section.
You have all our gratitude for working your buts of at Starbase every day.
The reason for us getting this extraordinary view of Super Heavy Booster 7’s engine connections is simple.
SpaceX is rushing this latest booster prototype through a rigorous test parkour.
From the first ever full cryo test on a Super Heavy booster in the entire history of the Starship program directly to the next test.
As talked about on the last episode,
this 33 hydraulic ram beasts sole purpose is to test if the structural integrity of the boosters hull can keep up with the simulated thrust of
33 raptor engines at full throttle.
They basically test the forces inflicted on the hull as if it was in full flight,
going upwards and pushing a fully fueled 1400-ton Starship to the velocity it would need to reach orbit.
Not an easy task at all.
Starships and their boosters are made from 3,97-millimeter thick 304x stainless steel.
So, almost half a centimeter. That might sound sturdy, but over the full length of 69 meters of a boosters hull it actually isn’t much at all.
If you’d want to build it at a scale of 1:72, so with a height of 95 centimeters or roughly 37 inches,
the hull would only be 0.05 millimeters thick, so thinner than a human hair.
Keep that in mind when looking at 3D printed Starships.
And yes, that was Starship steel in the picture I took for you.
The production site right now is at least equally as interesting as the launch site.
That’s all it is about right now.
Ship 24. The one to be pushed up to orbit by Booster 7, hopefully in May or June this year.
I know, there have been lots of delays with the orbital launch, but it does look very promising right now.
Even if it ends up to be July it would only be another 13 weeks now.
This is ship 24’s nose cone. Besides just a few missing heat tiles, it’s by far the best heat shield we’ve ever layed eyes on.
The Starbricks are placed even and smooth.
The special tiles that are not hex shaped have been ironed out by now.
All in all this looks like a heat shield that could actually survive a reentry.
The same goes for the tank and engine section of Ship 24.
Sitting in the High Bay right now, the central downcomer,
responsible for the connection between the upper methane tank and the engines section, has recently been installed.
After that, the engine section was mated to the tank section.
This picture shows the new cold gas thrusters and the new quick disconnect plate.
The thrusters will utilize ullage gas from the tanks for course corrections, which is a really smart move as it doesn’t need extra fuel.
It just takes some fumes from the tanks for Reaction control thrust.
The new quick disconnect plate is the reason for SpaceX recently unmounting the QD plate and connected fuel lines from the Mechazilla quick disconnect
arm. It is redesigned and it sits higher on the Starship hull.
So, a new quick disconnect adapter is needed on the Mechazilla QD arm.
Overall Ship 24 and Booster 7 are sprinkled with updated hardware all over the construction compared to Ship 20 and Booster 4. Likely much more
capable and so we’re in for a treat once they finally launch!
Now before we head over to the next topic, remember to like,
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It helps us to give you even better updates!
Thank you so much!
Axiom 1 launch & docking report
So, it happened! Axiom 1 lifted off towards the international space station and it was quite the show.
As usual with SpaceX crew launches the presentation was incredible.
Missed the launch? No problem.
Let’s do a rundown of the first all commercial crew launch towards the ISS!
And here we go! From left to right we have Mark Pathy from Canada, Larry Connor from the US,
Michael López-Alegría a former NASA astronaut from the US now working for Axiom Space and commander of the mission and Eytan Stibbe from Israel
as they exit the suit up room.
Roughly 3 hours until they had the ride of their lives onboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavor.
As its tradition on a SpaceX crew launch they got a ride in Tesla Model X’s towards the pad.
After all Elon Musk’s companies don’t just cover fancy rides in space.
Arriving at the pad with visible excitement is part of any crewed spaceflight.
In SpaceX’s flight suits it just looks that little bit cooler.
Even the walk through the crew access arm looks like it’s straight out of a sci fi movie.
A quick signature on the wall and off we go into the most advanced crew vehicle on the planet.
Still almost 3 hours to go. The excitement must be incredibly high at this point.
Sitting inside the capsule with three hours to go, waiting for engine ignition.
I wish, I could do that.
Hatch closed at T-2 hours.
And opened again because there was a foreign object inside the seal.
There are sensors responsible for leak checks.
Very useful system.
Access arm retract at T-44 minutes.
Launch escape system armed. That’s it.
They’re on their own now.
Fueling in progress. Falcon 9 is coming alive and getting ready for the launch.
SpaceX provided a nice live view from their latest and most advanced drone ship A Shortfall Of Gravitas which of course was already in position
down range for the booster landing.
For perspective, they may look small on the screen, but they’re actually about the size of a football field.
Less than 10 minutes to go. The excitement inside the capsule is at peak performance.
One minute to launch. FTS armed, tanks topped off, Falcon 9 is in startup and now in control.
10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 0 Ignition...
And lift off of Falcon 9 Axiom 1 and Crew Dragon Endeavor on their mission towards the International Space Station.
Stunning pictures from the pad and nominal propulsion on stage one.
50 seconds into flight stage one throttling down in preparation for max Q. Everything nominal.
Max Q and supersonic. Falcon 9 booster B1062.5 performed flawlessly.
Again, the number after the point is the number of flights.
So, this booster has done 4 flights prior to Axiom 1. Still absolutely unique in the space flight industry.
Phenomenal pictures from the tracking camera.
You can see the rocket exhaust expand as the ambient pressure falls, giving less and less resistance to the exhaust gasses.
And Meco. Main engine cut off, stage separation and MVac ignition of the second stage.
Falcon 9 is not only the most advanced rocket in the world.
It also performs like a clockwork.
Over and over again. Shortly after we can see a very clear view of the grid fin deployment in preparation for booster reentry.
You can still see the coast of Florida roughly 120 kilometers below.
And you can see the booster slowly aiming towards the landing spot as it needs to reenter engines first.
Entry burn to slow the booster down at T + 7 minutes and 30 seconds.
Stage two with Crew Dragon Endeavor still accelerating towards its orbit.
And just as the booster goes trans sonic the second stage cuts off the single Vacuum Merlin engine.
Nominal orbit insertion. And shortly after that the booster safely lands on the drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
For SpaceX the age of reusable rockets is already in full swing.
Flight number 5 done for B1062.
It feels so normal now but it’s still only SpaceX doing this.
And that’s it. Crew Dragon separation.
Looks like child’s play when SpaceX does this and they even have time to provide us with the best rocket launch broadcasts in the entire industry. Well done, SpaceX.
21 hours fast forward and Axiom 1 docked with the International Space Station without any issues.
While docking was happening, SpaceX provided us with some detailed views of what was happening inside the capsule.
It’s an open book to everyone.
SpaceX shows everything. Why? Maybe just because it’s really hard to copy this stuff.
And hatch open. The crew will now stay in space for 8 days before heading back down,
performing all sorts of science experiments and enjoying the most incredible view of Earth you can get.
Axiom 1 marks the beginning of a new age.
Commercial spaceflight is expanding and in the coming decades this will become more and more normal and with SpaceX’s Starship it might even
become affordable for everyday people like you and me.
Well done, SpaceX. Well done Axiom Space!
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