SpaceX Starship Build Frenzy, Terran 1 Finally Flies, Vulcan Centaur Test Success and more!
this video is sponsored by surfsharkvpn hey hey Marcus house with you here this week so many intriguing changes around Starship development as we watch designs evolve all while continuing on with the shielding upgrades prior to launch will SpaceX really fly 80 of all payload Mass to orbit this year that's kind of crazy right but well on the way with starlink a massive win for relatively space but how did the first flight go overall huge excitement with Vulcan Center or testing a new attempt for Rocket lab recovery and much more you're coming down the ladder now wow is there a lot to talk about this week at SpaceX at Starbase let's first start the journey off at the launch site action-packed here the first stop the six monstrous legs that hold up the orbital launch Mount during the last few weeks SpaceX installed these valves in the vertical extensions of the legs however to fully explain exactly what this is for we need to go back in time back to May 2021 at this point in time SpaceX was incredibly hard at work building out the full orbital launch site including the orbital launch Mount itself the six extension pieces were not yet installed and at this time they started with these interfacing plates having a black hole soon after they had been topped off with concrete concrete of course is amazing at sustaining compression loads so this makes the entire support structure much stronger the exact same reason why we are able to build skyscrapers this tall anyway an important thing to note is that these six extension pieces right next here were all Hollow just like the legs were however one end was capped off a few weeks after the extensions were installed into place and as we'd all expected the capped ends would interface with the orbital launch Mount table when that was lifted on top as far as we know though SpaceX never cut an access hole into those extension pieces to pump in concrete yep that's right they have been Hollow and much weaker than their full potential all this time including the full wet dress rehearsal two months ago well all that changed this week with this concrete truck arriving one by one all six legs had concrete pumped inside finally completing that task moving up the table just a little this week the final piece of the main side shielding was installed now strangely the second staircase that was halfway built running up the launch Mount was uninstalled this week and swiftly removed from the launch site altogether that's kind of weird and it also explains why they didn't install a differently shaped shielding piece right above the staircase similar to the one on the other staircase shielding pieces being lifted on top continued this week as well as what looks to be a pressure washer on top of that the scaffolding was in the process of being removed from the tower arms after it has been on there for well over a year another great sign of the polishing up for that ever closer orbital flight test no shortage of activity over at the build site remember last week I talked about ship 26 being moved into the highway well that sure didn't last long during the late hours of Monday evening it was moved back out but also onto Highway 4. yeah it was making its way towards the Sanchez site right here it turned down the Avenue and there it eventually parked right next to the mysterious new ship stand the crane there hooked up to ship 26 for a lift but the wind conditions at the time looked a little high along with this ship 28's common Dome section was also moved inside the high Bay early in the week as well then during the early hours of Wednesday SpaceX seemed to be moving the nose cone section multiple times here where they once again switching up the stacking of the ships well day came and the vehicle was spun around and it was now stacked with the common Dome that is a first by the way with the ships in the past SpaceX always stacked the tank section made up of the common Dome full liquid oxygen tank and the thrust section once that was done they then lower in the downcomer which serves to deliver the methane down to the engines now you can probably see the issue here you can't exactly fit their downcomer through a crew access hatch so how will they do this now a little speculation here but I think that they have simply already installed the sump and the top piece to the downcomer inside the common Dome once they've stacked the vehicle on top of the middle liquid oxygen section they can then lift the downcomer and weld it onto the sump why SpaceX seems to have changed this up all of a sudden now is an intriguing puzzle but it must be more efficient or less Troublesome somehow to further prove the fact that they are using this new stacking method it was then time to move the middle liquid oxygen section into the high Bay now this section is actually quite old at one point assigned to ship 26 before SpaceX made the decision to exclude the recovery Hardware from that vehicle needless to say the pace at which ship 28 is coming together is really quite amazing activity in the larger Mega Bay 2 just a few hours before last week's video went live the methane tank section for booster 10 was moved inside for final stacking before this though SpaceX have already started work on booster 11 the first in a new revision for the boosters so what do I mean by new revision well one of the big notable changes that we're seeing is this here they've greatly increased the amount of strings inside the methane tank compared to the previous few prototypes that's going to further increase the strength in the event of lower pressures inside so it seems that SpaceX are obviously still trying to get the best strength to mass ratio here hopefully this one is getting closer to that final design the first part of booster 11 to be moved inside the megabyte was one of the liquid oxygen tank sections following that the common Dome and that was then later shuffled around to allow the liquid methane tank for booster 10 inside as well before they could begin stacking booster 11 though they needed to First free up a turntable now up until recently SpaceX only had one active turntable in which they could weld sections together that was until this section here moved out of the mega Bay a little over a week ago this was actually supposed to be the thrust section of a future ship 32 before it was destined to be scrapped due to a world Parker issue now what the heck is that you may be asking to put it simply if a weld is puckered the quality is very low and most likely it isn't structurally sound either so if this was to be scrapped why would SpaceX move it inside the megabay well they have installed a second turntable and Welding robot and what better way to calibrate it than using this aft section destined to be scrapped anyway all they needed to do was stack a single ring on top of it and put the robot into action to fully test out all the systems now the turntable was ready for the more important job time to double lift these two booster 11 sections onto it the new turns table by the way is located on the right of the entrance in front of booster nine I just think this is all pretty exciting SpaceX is ready to start stacking booster 11 at a speed never seen before a bunch more of its sections presumably for the liquid oxygen tank were moved close by the mega Bay during the week one of them was placed at a holding location right in the front and the two others in the ringyard the barrel section from that holding pad was moved into the mega Bay late in the week which in typical fashion was stacked with the rest of the booster within a day back to booster 10 it was now time for it to be fully stacked the methane tank was lifted by the bridge crane as shown beautifully here by Nick with NASA space flight speaking of which nice rebranding going on this week that you may have noticed right here you can see the scaffolding near the common Dome ready to support workers to finish the welding and this really shows the added benefits of the two turntables two boosters and now being stacked almost simultaneously so each week there is enough activity to Warrant a visit to the Massey side these days so over we go if you remember I spoke not so long ago about SpaceX potentially using ship 25 to fully certify the new tank farm here for use Andrew from cosmic perspective heard a vehicle depress vent coming from the direction of Massey's one of the lamp Padre cameras swung over and would you look at that even though it is very dark here it looks like SpaceX was in the final stages of performing a cryogenic test with it but allowed to depressed venting happens near the end of the detanking process now while on the topic of the Massey site shout out here to Maria who shared what looks to be an overview of future plans of the site this shows that it may have a grand total of five testing pads one of those is where the B6 test tank is situated right at the back aptly named the burst pad it looks like SpaceX is still planning destructive testing in a very safe manner there speaking of safety let me tell you about surfsharkvpn sponsoring this video surfshark is committed to not tracking your online activity not storing web browser generated data and they don't share or sell any of your personal information yes surfshark only tracks the bare minimum just enough to keep your internet access running smoothly while wrapping you in a tight safe blanket of cyber security how many times have you gone to watch something and been Geo blocked well you can access content restricted from your country simply by changing your vpn's location once selected and connected that is it Geographic restriction disabled it is as simple as that there are loads more benefits too benefits like blocking pop-ups and ads preventing malware and viruses and then hiding your true IP address from your internet service provider that stops them logging useful traffic data too no matter if you are browsing gaming or streaming you are secure one of the greatest things about surfsharkvpn though is that I can use it on an unlimited number of devices this means anybody in my home with a laptop desktop mobile device or any combination of them can use surfsharkvpn on their devices simultaneously no added costs want to go and check it out for free go to surfshark.deal slash marks from the link in the description below and use code Marcus to get 83 off along with three extra months for free you can even get a 30-day money-back guarantee to try that risk-free thank you surfshark now this interesting tweet here by Elon Musk stated that SpaceX is on track to deliver 80 of All Earth's payloads to orbit in 2023 assuming of course no launch anomalies or anything unlikely like that eighty percent and just to put that into perspective China alone looked to be aiming to launch around 200 spacecraft this very year this week of course starlink was riding on Falcon 9 yet again this time booster 1067 carrying a starlink group 5-5 from slick 40. now we are watching these starlinks go pretty much weekly at this point but when it comes to the total Master orbit starlink is certainly making up a big chunk pushing the Falcon 9 to the near limits of what is actually possible with it all while still being recoverable on a drone ship just look at this one as a great example and this was Landing number 10 for this particular booster alone the satellites on this Mission were again the older version ones but interestingly SpaceX is also having some issues with the first set of version 2 minis launched a few weeks ago that's probably to be expected with all of the new technology some of them in fact are already being de-orbited with others needing to go through more tests before they are raised into the final orbits now here is the thing in that eighty percent musk is not even talking about Starship if that can fly to orbit successfully with a starlink payload this year SpaceX could even exceed that 80 percent now the first orbital test flight isn't going to be deploying anything into orbit obviously there is no payload by door on ship 24 that was fully sealed shut so a real payload such as Starling V2s would only happen afterward so to deliver all these satellites to orbit you need a heck of a lot of them luckily manufacturing should really ramp up soon now that this Factory here in Bastrop County Texas is near complete just check out these fresh shots again from Joe this site here is still assumed to be for starlink work it's right across the road from a boring company facility and interestingly there are now two boring tunnels between the two sites now I am not sure what these two tunnels are actually for it seems odd that they can't just make a road across a seemingly quiet street let me know what you think now while on the topic of this huge growing industry Tori Bruno the CEO of United launch Alliance said that for the first time in 30 years there is a global shortage of launch capacity especially with medium two heavy lift options this is not only due to Mega constellations such as starlink or Amazon's copper project but also the withdrawal of Russian Vehicles recently as well what is making this more problematic though is that the new rockets such as ula's Vulcan Center has been delayed for so long now that first Maiden flight hopefully sometime in early May is still looking good in fact we've just had Ula complete Pathfinder tests on both the Vulcan first stage and the Centaur upper stage to validate the performance of both great footage of the booster rolling out here and arriving at space launch complex 41. just think for a minute how much time and effort it takes to prepare something of this magnitude for its first flight you might be wondering actually why there is no flame trench underneath here well actually there is it is just closed off until closer to launch to give the crew greater accessibility to all these systems around the pad this test seemed to go really well and it also let them test out the countdown steps and procedures a great opportunity to test out all of those propellant loading procedures with this time lapse of the event posted only a few days ago now check this out whoa yes this is going to let me show this very nicely remember vulcan's booster here uses liquid natural gas and liquid oxygen and then the upper stage the Centaur 5 here is going to use Liquid hydrogen and oxygen both of them stacked together here of course during the test and the detanking and the securing processes used to drain the propellant to back into the pad storage tanks looked to be Flawless last we heard the engineers were reviewing test data collected Before The Next Step that being a wet dress rehearsal and a flight Readiness firing where they're going to ignite the be4 engines and demonstrate a hot fire abort recycle and safe only then will it be sent to the vertical integration facility to prepare for this mission as for the maker of this product here I've been told that he's wanted by local control authorities for jaywalking with two different blue whales whatever that means and it apparently took him a whole bag of snacks to teach his rocket to power slide off the launch pad I don't know if any of that's true all I know that he is called Darth rust thank you mate most appreciated another successful flight of electron just a few days ago rocket lab is the only space company to successfully launch two rockets from two hemispheres within days of each other the stronger together Mission first from Virginia a little over a week ago from the US and now the beat goes on from launch complex one in New Zealand this Mission sent a pair of black Sky generation 2 satellites out of the atmosphere and on their way to orbit the stage and fearing separation there and the payload was sitting within those fairings these babies of course do great real-time geospatial intelligence and monitoring of stuff which I've talked about before lots more information from their website in the description but let's just rewind here as you may have noticed by the boosters Raider top this was a recovery Mission interestingly though unlike previous missions where a helicopter was used to catch the first stage this one was instead purposefully allowed to splash down in the ocean where it was then retrieved and transported back for analysis now I know what US thinking salt water is known to be corrosive to sensitive rocket parts right however rocket lab confirmed that the Rutherford engines do remarkably well after a dip in the ocean they even posted a video of an ancient flawlessly completing a full duration hot fire after it was recovered in this way even Peter Beck got in on the action this week indicating that the company made small changes to their engines to avoid corrosion actually he called them water tolerance reminding us that it's still cheaper to clean your dirt bike than making an entirely new one from scratch can't argue with that logic I guess with these improvements the helicopter cat is no longer worth the effort not unlike SpaceX giving up on the catching of the Falcon 9 fairings I guess with this new recent launch there are now 16 black Sky satellites in the constellation and that was a wrap nice work rocket lab two launches from two vastly different locations so close together that is a neat milestone now I don't know about you but like most out there I was super excited to witness the first ever 3D printed rocket launch of Relativity spaces Terran one hoping of course we would see it make it all the way to orbit and yes it did finally launch just look at that standing at 110 feet tall and 7.5 feet wide and there is the metric conversion on screen as well this two-stage Expendable rocket is the largest 3D printed object ever made the Terran one is about 85 3D printed by mass in fact the big question was though could a 3D printed rocket really be strong enough to make it through the most intense parts of a flight if so it could mean a massive reduction to the mass to orbit costs or potentially revolutionary stuff Thursday rolled around and this was it the maiden flight Mission known as good luck have fun proceeded Through The Final Countdown with very little Interruption only holding twice actually first due to another range violation is a cruise ship crossed over the designated boundary then the other hold as the teams assessed the upper level wins finally though that 10 second countdown as we eagerly watched the Terran one engines ignite yes there it was blasting off for the first time this was also aiming of course to be the first ever methane and oxygen-propelled vehicle to make it to orbit and wow you could really tell just check out the blue flame as the Terran one screamed upwards great photos shared by Tim Ellis later by the amazing photographers on the ground were certainly appreciated as well the primary goal was obviously to collect as much data as possible but the biggest moment came when Taryn won successfully passed Max Q about 80 Seconds into the flight it just cruised beautifully right through the most intense part of the flight where the aerodynamic forces are the greatest still in one piece the Terran one rocket had already proven that the 3D printing technology used would allow it to withstand those intense loads it continued all the way in fact to Stage separation we couldn't actually see the separation itself from the live stream but there was the second stage appearing all of a sudden firing up all by itself orbit was looking real good there for a second but then look at that the engine looked to have just cut out sadly that was it for this Mission with the second stage re-entering the atmosphere soon after now there was no customer payload to lose or anything like that though so no problem despite this second stage anomaly this flight in my eyes is a huge Victory holding even more significance as it marks a series of first the first launch for relativity space and for Terran one the first 3D printed rocket the first rocket to attempt orbit using liquid oxygen and liquid methane as the propellant massive congrats to every single person who made this historic launch possible your hard work and dedication has paid off in a truly or inspiring way and there is much more to come so that is about it for the week if you love keeping up to date remember that that subscribe button is only just a click away thank you as well to the amazing patrons and YouTube members continually helping me bring this stuff to you each and every weekend if you are already in that list remember to connect yourself with Discord with those added perks so that we can chat away it's always great to talk to you in the lead up to the first Starship orbital flight test you may be interested in watching this video here on the left a great Showcase of 3D artists work and Starship presentation information if you have missed of that one on the right some other Deep dive topics if you want to continue that Journey right now thank you everyone for watching all this way through and I'll see you all in the next video
2023-03-28 08:48
