250 Tonnes to Orbit!?: SpaceX's New Expendable Starship Option
hey hey Marcus house with you here welcome to another exciting week in the world of space today an array of captivating topics to delve into from the latest updates on the Starship project including the creation of a potential water Deluge system to an intriguing Rideshare Mission with spectacular starlink launches also we get to explore NASA's Innovative rotating detonation rocket engine design and that is not all another breathtaking spacewalk honoring two Heroes with the space Medal of Honor and much much more so sit back hold on tight as we blast through yet another awesome week of updates see you coming down the ladder now all right let's start off at the Rocket Garden and ship 24. last week I had suggested along with many that this was most likely only a temporary holding spot for ship 24 before its orbital flight well I've got some great news right after my last video went live SpaceX hoisted themselves up there and started with the removal of the shackles at the nose cone they then placed new plates to cover those holes now you may be wondering how SpaceX can line up those heat shield tile pins on these cover plates up perfectly with the pins on the nose cone itself well that is rather simple actually they mount the plates on the nose cone when the pin placing machine is actually attaching the pins in this case it kind of looks like they've used the wrong plates or misplaced the originals because they have been at work swapping them out as can be seen here once that was done the tiling was soon underway I kind of think that they could also slap another lick of paint around here is it's looking quite worn in some places after all this time out in the weather over to the launch site lots of new things have been happening here first off the orbital launch Mount during the last few weeks SpaceX have been busy installing a load of covers protecting all of the piping going up the legs and also giving everything a nice new coat of paint it looks about ready to be scorched Again by that 33 engine static fire right surprisingly SpaceX swapped out two Raptor engines from underneath booster 7 early in the week one of them that was removed was wrapped in number 24 the lowest serial number Raptor that was on booster 7 I believe its position was taken by Raptor number 105. that didn't end the Raptor action as a third with serial number 100 was delivered to the launch site on Wednesday ahead of that being swapped out this diagram from Chameleon Circuit shows the layout with all raptors that we currently know and their engine positions of course this made us wonder why exactly SpaceX has swapped these engines out now was it because the wet dress rehearsal last week ended up showing that data was undesirable for these Raptors or is SpaceX simply swapping out the oldest for what should hopefully be far more reliable ones whilst on the topic of swapping out old Parts even before the wet stress rehearsal SpaceX had removed one of the two hydraulic power units from booster 7. now just in case you are not aware of what these are for these are needed to provide the hydraulic power to gimbal the Raptor Center engines on booster 7 booster 9 no longer needs these given that it uses an electric gimbal system so with all this work being undertaken on the booster it was really not surprising to see all of the road closures being canceled through the week so we may just be waiting a little longer for that colossal static fire event which we had hoped to see this week now if you remember I talked about a possible water Deluge system for the orbital launch pad at Starbase just a few weeks ago and things sure have changed a lot since then now I'm going to say two words and these now might be considered dirty words at this point they're kind of a meme water tower yes clear speculation warning here because I think it could be possible that we will see a water tower in this location for the suspected water Deluge system a few weeks ago it was just a dirt Mount now a lot of new footings have popped up first here we have these two wide parallel footings and then these two slightly offset pairs now what does all this have to do with a water delu system you may ask well over at historic launch complex 39a SpaceX had previously installed all of this which I suspect all has to do with the w system they are already hard at work setting up pipe work at what we call the Sanchez site right here as a quick side note next to that was the old thrust section from booster 8 steadily being cut into piece cases now I suspect that those big manifolds which by the way should appear at Starbase any day now are used to stagger the Colossal flow of water being pushed down the pipes into such a system such a stagger is also very nicely visualized here when NASA tested the W system at launch complex 39b for the space launch system just in the last day RGV aerial photography captured these shots of the barge arriving and then being unloaded from the Brownsville ship Harbor all of this gear will be making the roughly 30 kilometer journey to Starbase assuming that a lot of it isn't there already so that isn't the only site absolutely packed with activity let's head over to the old Macy's range over the last few weeks a lot has changed over here SpaceX has been very hard at work expanding the tank farm with a lot of the pipes actively being built a very nice thing to note in my opinion is that it's always really easy to spot if pipes are going to be used for cryogenic liquids those pipes have always got these expansion Loops installed these Loops are super important in these cryogenic lines because they allow for thermal expansion and contraction of the pipe material due to the huge changes in temperature in this way they can bend and flex as needed without their lines breaking right next to the ever expanding tank farm the workers wrapped up with the foundations for this seemingly Square bit also hexagonal pad what this pad may be for isn't fully certain but if we take a look at the Hardware close by perhaps this might end up becoming a ship cryo station now that is a pretty big claim isn't it well over here is a ship quick disconnect and on the side here is what I can probably assume is the base construction of a ship cryo station to top that all off this could very well be the six bolting interfaces that SpaceX has also installed over at the cryo station near the orbital launch Mount speculative but there is a lot of evidence here okay so I can already hear you typing in the comments asking why SpaceX would test full ships all the way over at Macy's well you may recall that in the programmatic environmental assessment SpaceX has a limited number of testing hours available each year at Starbase with production ramping up quite intensively they are probably looking at a good way to reserve those closure hours for launches or static fires as we know there will be a lot more ships needed than boosters so this could explain why this location may only be for ship testing for now it's also worth a quick mention that SpaceX updated this Starship page on their website along with having the ability to carry up to 150 metric tons to low earth orbit added here it says when being expended it can carry up to 250 metric tons in such a variant you don't need a heat shield header tanks fins or any of that stuff it becomes a much simpler and cheaper looking design that is for sure musk did mention that this version may never fly but it could be an option now that's kind of crazy to think about isn't it Skylab just for comparison was about 76 tons so over three of those in terms of mass the entire International Space Station is estimated to be about 420 tons so Starship could launch that equivalent mass in Expendable mode comfortably within just two launches that is just nuts starship's volume of course is a totally different matter but you get the idea SpaceX also had another busy week of starlink launch action the first lifting off on Tuesday morning now there was a hidden passenger on this flight which I thought made it a little unique there was 49 Starling satellites on board but also an extra 50th satellite on top of the stack for italy-based company D orbit this Falcon 9 booster 1071 took off from California's Vandenberg space force base on this beautiful morning clear of any fog a wonderfully picturesque view all the way to Stage separation in fact it is actually the perfect time of day to see the incredible detail right through the booster's entire Coast phase with the exception of losing signal right after the entry burn it was uninterrupted right to the deck just look at that precise landing on the Drone ship of course I still love you they did also leave the view on the Drone ship for a while too which was kind of neat that was the seventh flight and Landing for this booster and at the same time off camera the second stage had completed its burn and was left to coast in low earth orbit until a little over 53 minutes into the mission it then needed to do a tiny second burn before deploying de-orbits ion satellite carrier vehicle number nine sadly there were no visuals of that but de-orbit have released this nice animation work in the past that shows how this works even if the vehicle deployments themselves are different in this case now this had a diverse set of payloads from munich-based company high performance space structure systems or HPS us company ebad Swiss Institute epfl and New Zealand company Stardust me the most interesting ones to me were the HPS payload which is a breaking sale prototype to bring satellites down from Earth orbit more efficiently and stardust me provides customers with Memorial space flights and their payloads consist of aluminum machined capsules carrying human cremated ashes quite a touching idea really and I wonder how big of an industry this sort of thing alone could end up becoming finally of course the 9 upper stage deployed the 49 Starling satellites about 1 hour and 17 minutes after launch as planned off camera still craving some more Falcon 9 action well have no fear as on Thursday another one launched the starlink group 5-3 Mission into orbit this time from pad 39a always a great excuse to take a look at the cape's Starship launch Tower which is looking closer to complete by the day launches in the darkness aren't quite so beautiful but man does it make the plume look fantastic in the night sky what was a particularly great milestone for this mission was that this was spacex's 200th flight of a falcon 9 this booster itself was flying for the fifth time the darkness I will say does provide one little insight you don't normally see as clearly on a day flight that is of course the heat on those grid fins on the re-entry it is much harder to tell how far the booster is from the Drone ship during the landing burn you've almost just got to look for the reflection of the rocket exhaust off the ocean and then bam yet another Flawless Landing this time on a short fall of gramatas after a few glimpses of the Starling stack the stream was quickly wrapped up now we were just expecting the usual tweet to confirm the satellite separation but with it being Falcon 9's 200th successful Mission we were treated to a couple of extra images too of course the plume shot here being my favorite now you may recall me talking about NASA and darpa's announcement of their collaboration to demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket or ntp engine in space another interesting project that has been recently making the news is this revolutionary propulsion design for deep space missions NASA Engineers have developed and tested NASA's first full-scale rotating detonation rocket engine that is an advanced rocket engine design that has big implications for the future of space travel it may just look like a regular sort of Rocket or jet engine type deal but it is much more interesting than that this engine generates its thrust by detonations essentially creating a continuous stable supersonic combustion which is kind of crazy to think about now this is different to how conventional chemical rocket engines work is they use constant pressure combustion or deflorigration to burn propellants together in a subsonic Flame the idea here with this new form of engine is to instead control that detonation process something that is obviously very tricky to do with a rotating detonation rocket engine what the engineers are trying to do is to create a Shockwave that is continually detonating think of this pressure wave revolving around the engine in a circular fashion constantly receiving fresh injected propellant the end result is a Perpetual detonation chasing itself around the combustion chamber this video here by Purdue propulsion shows this very nicely if you look at this footage in real time it doesn't really look much different to typical rocket engines does it hot stuff comes out the flamey and right but when we look at it in slow motion it then becomes super interesting with the detonation wave racing around at a ridiculous speed so how much more efficient could these types of engines be well it is speculated that they could be up to 25 percent better than your conventional rocket engine but who knows how close this test was to that NASA here was not really quoting any specific impulse or exhaust velocity so we don't know exactly how high a performance that we are talking about for these tests so as with many things of this nature more research and development is made to fully determine the realistic potential of rotating detonation rocket engines and how practical they may actually be in the future any technology that can reduce propellant usage and also increase performance while still being very reliable is the end goal so I'm sure that you all remember that thrilling moment when the first crew dragon mission with humans on board took place such an important Milestone both for SpaceX and NASA well the two incredible former NASA astronauts Bob benkin and Doug Hurley were awarded the prestigious Congressional space Medal of Honor for that historic flight on the demo 2 crew dragon mission to the International Space Station all the way back in 2020 that was a critical flight as it marked the first crude orbital space flight from the United States in almost a decade since the shuttle retired in 2011. absolutely well deserved Bob and Doug I'm so thrilled for both of you and your families as I'm sure we all are the success of that mission by the way was absolutely Paving the way for NASA to launch a series of routine crew rotations on the amazing crew Dragon no more relying on Russia's soyuz vehicle to get astronauts to space opening up a new era of space access for the International Space Station just think if we were still waiting for Starlight honor who knows how different the last few years would have looked the Expedition 68 crew were back at it again this week accomplishing another successful spacewalk on Thursday as the team continues to work on upgrading the International Space Station's power generation system astronauts Nicole man of NASA and koichiwakata of jaxa spent several hours outside the station completing the installation of the work that began on January the 20th the two worked together there putting their training and expertise on full display and given that they had both done their very first spacewalks over two weeks ago they already had great experience going into this one NASA flight Engineers Josh cassida and Frank Rubio assisted them in and out of their spacesuits and monitored the spacewalk from inside the station in fact it's been a productive week on the station not only successfully completing that spacewalk but other important stuff too the progress 81 was being filled with disposable trash and Expendable items As It prepares for its departure in a few days a new cargo vehicle is then set to arrive on February the 11th with the launch of the progress ms-22 late this coming week speaking of the International Space Station huge thanks to Henson shaving supporting this video given that the team have previously been involved in creating Aerospace equipment their incredible skills are also well suited to create the super precise al-13 Razer this is engineered with Superior intelligent design and that has resulted in a remarkably low return rate of less than two percent not only is the Razer and the packaging completely free of plastic but it is also built to last for many years now some may be hesitant to try a safety razor but the al-13 is designed with this Simplicity and ease of use of a cartridge razor in mind while still delivering the benefits of a safety razor I have been using this exclusively now for months and I just love it you just hold it at the optimal 30 degrees and the blade itself sticks out only about 0.0013 of an inch then from an efficiency point of view you can just order 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razor in the color you like and select the pack of 100 blades before adding it to the cart entering the code Marcus in the final step of the checkout process and that's it 100 free blades upgrade your shaving experience to Aerospace grade thank you Henson shaving now as I wrap up this episode I just wanted to get the word out there about a game that you may have seen me playing in the past simple Rockets too well it has just left early access after all this time six years in development and the functionality has grown so much that they've actually changed its name I mean that kind of makes sense right it isn't simple Rockets anymore now it is Juno new Origins there is a lot that has changed since I did some tutorials on Rocket exhaust over expansion and under expansion over four years ago now gosh where does that time go to list everything that has changed since then would take a video on its own but in short we now have a career mode in this new version which the developers have been working on for over a year you complete contracts to unlock a new tech tree and earn funds for future missions loads of work has gone into parts for cars aircraft and all sorts of stuff the main difference with this and Kerbal Space Program in my opinion is that this really lets you customize stuff to the nth degree and for some that might be just too much power but for others it is incredible it's also quite different with the flight controls as you sort of set the direction and the pitch and it automatically then moves it smoothly for you this is all largely due to the full interface being designed for touch screens and mobile devices while we have got no cute little green kerbals here instead we have more human looking characters colder Druids to perform that function it is sort of amazing to see what people can create with this even though it has got many fewer Parts than something like KSP that is because each part is much more customizable it even has a built-in scripting system and you may recall how much fun I had playing with systems such as Kerbal operating system back in the day so yes regardless of whether you are a pro with KSP and just want a new Fresh perspective or maybe you're a total beginner and want to learn something from scratch it is there to try and I would love to know what you think below Kerbal Space Program 2 of course is just around the corner hopefully coming at the end of this month we are very very spoiled for choice right now so that is about it for the week but I just wanted to point out how incredible it was to see everybody's excitement last week super thrilled about the wet dress rehearsal news the comment thread just came to life I just can't express how grateful the team and I are for your support in what we do your memberships on patreon and YouTube have made such a huge difference in allowing us to create content reliably and at this quality to bring these Visions to life there are also recently quite a few of you that are commenting about being unintentionally unsubscribed so I'm not sure what is going on there some YouTube AI going wild cleaning things up I guess regardless thanks for being subscribed and liking and watching all that we do you allow us to continue to bring joy and Inspire hundreds of thousands of people every single week so grateful to have you on this journey with us if you want to keep that going right now you might be interested in this video on the left diving into what it will take to send humans on a Mars mission and some other similar topics there on the right thank you as always for watching all this way through I'll see you all in the next video
2023-02-07 15:44
