SpaceX Starship Breaks New Record, and Nuclear Rocket Engine Announced
hey hey Marcus house with you here this week marks a huge milestone for spacex's Starship project as we head into the next arguably bigger one there's a lot to unpack today we have the historic first launch of the electron rocket in the United States to the groundbreaking advancements coming in nuclear thermal rocket engines also taking a look at the awe-inspiring Vulcan Center on site in Florida and more contingency plans for the Leaky soyuz ms-22 this week is packed with action so let's just jump right into it well there is no doubt that we are kicking this video off with spacex's First full stack wet dress rehearsal this was a big test and although there was no exciting fire for this Milestone it was arguably even more crucial the day itself started off bright and early at approximately four in the morning when the last SpaceX workers closed off the main entrance gate indicating that the pad was almost fully cleared and ready to go this time though the village residents were asked to evacuate as well something that we haven't seen since the days of Starship flight testing we also had an indication that the evacuation was not just limited to the residents in the village no Even spacex's build site which is even further away completely slowed to a halt too there was also transport arranged here for those people that still needed to get out the roadblock was now also even further back than the location I mentioned for the tests the week prior now all the way back here at the Sanchez site this test was being taken very seriously soon after this r-44 helicopter took to the skies and was seen flying back and forth multiple times this four-seater was on standby all day to head out again if needed now not long after the road closed the tower arms had released ship 24 just look at them there wide open in what we can safely assume I think is the position that they will be in during a launch the wet dress rehearsal excitement was finally here after a fairly long series of preparation steps the orbital launch Mount started venting these sub-chillas were roaring away once again further lowering the temperature of the fluids on the way into the Colossal 120 meter tall Behemoth and in true SpaceX fashion they were loading both the liquid oxygen and the liquid methane simultaneously the frost line steadily climbing both tanks on the booster all of a sudden the tower venting became a much thicker the sign that ship 24 stacked on top was about to load as well there we go propellant now being loaded in all four main tanks wow and just like we expected during a True wet dress rehearsal Countdown the ship engine chill venting started up as well yes almost everything except actually firing those engines up was to be tested this day now even though propellant loading was still continuing at this stage I'm pretty sure that at this point in time SpaceX had already broken the record of the heaviest rocket ever filled a record previously held by NASA's Saturn V rocket at nearly 3 000 tons SpaceX were blowing straight past that as typical periodic venting occurred to keep the tank pressure optimal the ship propellants loading was at this point in time nearly fully completed indicated by the small vents near the forward flaps here this is where the two header tanks are in the nose also being filled as well just a few minutes later the ship loading was completed indicating by the tower venting again but wait what was this wow that looked to be huge amounts of liquid methane being vented from the booster's tank a few minutes later it happened again I must admit I'm hoping that there was a little unexpected pressure build up or something in this case because that looks like a bad situation if this is the standard venting process for a fully loaded vehicle one tiny spark and that vent could become a colossal flamethrower do during that second big event the orbital launch Mount started event again a good sign that the propellants loading had now finished on the booster as well just look at this glorious stack fully loaded with propellant now just to show that everything was still going ahead as planned with the wet dress rehearsal Countdown the fire suppression system was activated as well at this exact point of course is where we would have seen the Raptors igniting here for flight but being a wet dress rehearsal it was time to detank and secure the vehicle the tower arms closed back in and we could see the frost on the outside of the booster sync on all four tanks at this point we were all curious had the massive test all gone to plan well while the detanking was still underway SpaceX announced here that it was indeed a fully successful wet dress rehearsal at Starbase also noting that it had been filled with more than 10 million pounds of propellant I was super thrilled that they did Grace us with this amazing drone shot showing the full stack totally loaded likewise a beauty by Nick with NASA space flight right here now getting back to that 10 million pounds it is estimated in many places that the full propellants load is about 5 000 tons but which tons you have metric tons but converting the 10 million pounds equates to to a little over 4 500 of those so I'm assuming that we've been talking U.S tons this whole time since this would make those numbers add up remember as well that there is also Imperial tons which are slightly different again don't you just love units like this anyway Monday wrapped up with both rocket stages emptied out it is interesting to look at these shots comparing the full stack before the load and another once it was fully loaded just check that out you can see that the full stack seems to have shrunk quite a bit that's all due to the fact that the loading of the propellant causes the stainless steel to shrink that would all be expected of course but part of these tests are to ensure that everything that needs to flex does so and nothing starts buckling that would affect all other Rockets with cryogenic propellants but the bigger the rocket the bigger the effect just look here at the awesome comparison of the SLS core stage shrinking more fun information was shared the next day with SpaceX tweeting out what the future plans were for booster 7 and ship 24 the ship as expected was to be de-stacked from booster 7 all in preparation for the next big exciting Milestone the gigantic 33 engine static fire that is a Thrust Force never achieved by SpaceX and what I expect will exceed any other in history assuming of course that they upper the throttle well above the minimum I really do hope that they will share the total forces after that happens because that certainly could break the historic record of the N1 as always a massive thanks to both lamp Padre and NASA space flight streaming these events all the way it has been a colossal week and it didn't end there preparations were soon underway with the teams moving the ship transport stand closer to the tower to d-stack in fact on Wednesday the entire launch site absolutely crawled with activity and preparations were made to lift the ship off the booster after a few low pressure events were quickly resolved first the ship quick disconnect retracted shortly followed by the teams removing the electrical connections away swings the quick disconnect arm and there we go the full stack is no more preparations for that elusive 33-inch and static fire now continue hopefully coming in a week or two and in the meantime ship 24 needed a new home some rumors floating around suggested it was moved to the Rocket Garden to be retired now don't panic because where else could they have put it pad B at the launch site has shipped 25 on it pad a has the hydraulic thrust Puck simulators installed making it impossible to lift on there with the wrapped engines installed the cryo station stands right near the tower is way too close and the high Bays of the build site are packed with ships and boosters being built or dismantled therefore being moved to the Rocket Garden is the next best place and that has got all the equipment needed to keep it secure and pressurized a very safe bet I think is that ship 24 is A-Okay just needing those lift points removed and a handful of tiles patched over the area so how has the scrapping process been going last week of course we witnessed ship 22 moving into the high Bay to be dismantled well SpaceX has made very short work of this vehicle with it being cut up rapidly from the bottom upward starting with its thrust section within just 24 hours the ship went from its full length to just the individual sliced up sections booster 8 was not spared either with first the methane tank being fully cut up into segments ending with the forward Dome being moved out and then it was time for the AFT tank to move inside the mega Bay and scrapping started off with its thrust section moving out here notice how they've just cut straight through the Chimes as well as with most things in life very hard and time consuming to build but it takes only moments to destroy this sure has been an incredible week of Starship insights remember to save a copy of these images by SpaceX it was a very historic milestone the contingency plans continued in relation to the soyuz ms-22 spacecraft NASA flight Engineers Josh cassida and Nicole man were hard at work inside spacex's crew Dragon Endurance on the space station just recently doing what you may ask well they've moved a seat liner from the soyuz to the dragon and this is because the crews on board the space station can't reliably return on ms-22 due to the coolant leak that we've been discussing on the channel since it first occurred with the plan to return the three crew NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and the two cosmonauts Sergey endometri on the next ms-23 vehicle there still needs to be a plan in case of an emergency evacuation before that time each seat liner on soyuz is custom made with individually molded seats is shown beautifully right here Frank Rubio's custom seat liner now being in Dragon will allow him to return on that vehicle Instead at the same time as reducing the heat load inside the ms-22 spacecraft for the two cosmonaut if they did need to return on that compromised soyuz this is all very unlikely of course but it just goes to show that these contingency plans are very important this story I think has been intriguing to so many of us as it is interesting to see how the teams on board deal with such a problem a problem serious enough to cause reporters worldwide to make assumptions about what the solution to this could be thanks to ground news I can see exactly how this issue is being covered and verify information in real time for example 21 news outlets reported on the soyuz spacecraft leak and the coverage was pretty evenly split between sources across the political Spectrum you can even get an overview of the ownership of the sources and how reliable their reporting practices are according to ratings from three Independent News monitoring organizations but what I find most helpful is the ability to read and compare almost any article on this specific topic to see the discrepancies in the language used and details highlighted I also love the fact that the this website and app was developed by a former NASA engineer specifically to bring a more data-driven approach to our news consumption so that we know exactly where our information is coming from it is a great way to avoid misleading facts that have been clearly debunked after all as media Outlets keep narrowing their perspectives it gets real difficult to get a balanced view on the critical elements ground news is aggregating over 50 000 sources here all in one convenient place created to offer transparency in the ever murkier media landscape it has become a great resource for me as I navigate science and technology news and if you'd like to check it out for yourself you can go to ground.news Marcus to subscribe for as little as one dollar a month thank you to ground news for kindly sponsoring this video now last week I covered the latest space walk to prepare for the next set of solar array upgrades all very successful of course but since then NASA shared this image and I just wanted to share it with you this is koichiwakata a super high res image in particularly beautiful Clarity isn't it you can see that he is holding on to this camera and oh hang on wait what yes this is just the reflection of koichi in the visor of Nicole man are you kidding me well meet NASA astronaut Nicole man as she soars through the infinite abyss of space in her extra vehicular Mobility unit all during her first ever spacewalk it was koichi's first two which was kind of neat the detail in this shot is freaking incredible isn't it I've got a link in the description so that you can explore this yourself as this video probably doesn't even do it justice let's just zoom into the tool belt here super intricate to the point that you can actually read the labels around the image this here is the NASA pistol grip cordless drill just as one example I don't think I've ever talked about this drill before but it's a super complex piece of Kit all programmable with a high speed torque and slow speed astronauts can preset a speed the number of rotations the direction such as what we can see here with the clockwise and counterclockwise labels and yeah all sorts of stuff anyway I just thought that that was a mind-blowing image so give it a look when you've got a spare second now as you may recall I've got a very big interest in future forms of propulsion particularly ones with higher specific impulse I even made a deep dive on that just recently well some cool news this week because NASA and DARPA announced here a collaboration to demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket or ntp engine in space Also stating that they want to do this as early as 2027 as you may recall from last time I talked about this using a nuclear thermal rocket allows for faster transit times simply due to the specific impulse or ISP the typical chemical Rockets lack about the best that we've got right now is something like the rl10 engine which has an ISP a little over 465 and that by far exceeds engines using propellants such as rp1 or even methane and oxygen without going into too much detail the higher the ISP the greater the fuel efficiency a nuclear engine should have a specific impulse in excess of 900 with less propellants needed to do the same work this should make Vehicles capable of faster interplanetary transit times perhaps have larger payloads or a combination of the two but how does it work the nuclear thermal rocket engine uses a fission reactor to generate extremely high temperatures the engine transfers the heat produced by the reactor to a liquid propellant which is then expanded and shot out the nozzle at a tremendous velocity to propel the spacecraft forward for all those Kerbal Space Program fans out there unlocking that nerve engine is a huge step forward in the game now these Concepts have been created before but they were abandoned before they could ever be tested in space and well now that is all about to change finally it's also worth noting I think that NASA with the Department of energy are also developing Advanced space nuclear technologies such as NASA's fish and surface power project so all of this Tech is going to be combined for future missions to the moon and Mars well the long wait is over and Rocket lab have finally launched electron from the United States for the very first time on Tuesday January the 24th there it sat awaiting the countdown from launch complex 2 at Virginia's space Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within NASA's Wallops Flight Facility the nine sea level Rutherford engines run to life and hurled the rocket off the pad for this first exciting event a historic moment really for the company with this Mission creatively named Virginia is for launch lovers it was great actually to see the different ground camera views compared to what we've witnessed from New Zealand although it is hard to compete with those views having a different perspective from this flight as it screamed through the launch phase up to Stage separation was a little emotional I've got to say rocket lab have come a long long way on top of that Milestone it deployed three satellites for Hawkeye 360. previously these have launched on Falcon 9 so it's great to see rocket lab now getting involved too they plan to deliver 15 satellites to low earth orbit in total over five missions by the end of next year so one down four to go these satellites I think perform a very important service with global availability to critical Services now such as GPS comes the also frightening reality of their vulnerabilities those Services can be interrupted by radio frequency interference watch the Hawkeye 360 constellation plans to do is to complete precise mappings of radio frequency emissions with that data we can detect intentional and unintentional GPS interference sources and then help to avoid and protect against disruptions that is pretty cool now this Mission has been plagued with a few delays and rightfully so considering that everything needed to be extremely well tested for this new launch site the weather also had not been cooperating it was originally scheduled to take place in December but that fell into January due to the unfavorable weather conditions it was actually even pushed from Monday to Tuesday for that exact reason this week as well I should just note that although this was electron's first launch from the US rocket lab has loads of experience already having conducted 32 electron missions from launch complex 1 in New Zealand given that this new launch site has also been successful I think it's a testament to the hard work and the dedication of the rocket lab team or with the support from NASA and Virginia space as a rocket lab looks forward to many more successful launches from Wallops one thing is for certain not even the sky is the limit for Rocket lab and the incredible future technology that they have got coming on Thursday morning SpaceX successfully launched yet another Falcon 9 with starlink on board but what seemed like a fairly typical launch was not this one was actually carrying a record-breaking payload Mass with 56 satellites on board the weight apparently just over 17.4
metric tons the booster 1067 was on its ninth flight for this Mission and given that it was launched at 4 30 in the morning it wasn't the most interesting visually due to the darkness never fear though a great plume expansion shot is a time lapse for you as it Rockets up there to Stage separation this booster was now on its way back down to land on the Drone ship just read the instructions nice signal coverage right to the deck there as SpaceX nailed yet another Landing so although this was the starlink 5-2 mission which was the second launch into the fifth shell as far as we know these satellites are still identical even though this shell was initially for generation 2 satellites well they're visually identical at least perhaps they there are some minor differences that can't be seen with the old Mark 1 eyeball another mission done and dusted with the deployment confirmed off screen so with SpaceX these days having a concrete reputation as a reliable provider of National Security missions it's going to be interesting watching any new information that comes to light with the new product called starshield I did touch on this quickly the Wicket popped up as they quietly introduced this service aiming to provide defense and intelligence agencies with tailor-made Solutions at least partially utilizing spacex's investment in the starlink satellite Network in fact here on the SpaceX website itself it states that starshield uses additional High Assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely I think this image here is intriguing actually because it could be a shot providing a few hints at Star Shield technology already in orbit this line drawing as well also perhaps providing a few interesting hints so the future of space launches has arrived in Florida for United launch Alliance the very first next gen Vulcan Centaur rocket early in the week reached its Florida Spaceport ready for Blast Off rolling it off the rocket pad barge and onto Solid Ground at Port Canaveral this bad boy is set to make its maiden voyage in the coming months from space launch complex 41 the booster stage here rolled towards the cape as shared by Tori Bruno ula's CEO there was a lot more than this delivered in this shipment though we saw the interstage adapter the Centaur 5 upper stage being unloaded with it Greg Scott of course out there on site capturing it all for us in Exquisite detail as the new rocket components head to the Operation Center on Wednesday here it was being lifted vertically into the facility I can't wait for this launch the thing that I'm looking forward to the most from this mission is the Peregrine lunar lander which will be carrying 24 payloads to the Moon that includes 11 for NASA as part of that commercial lunar payload Services project I think it is a really fun time for all of these robotic Moon missions the hakuto r mission 1 lunar lander continues to go smoothly it has traveled 1.4 million kilometers from Earth well past the moon and it now continues to perform gravitationally assisted deep space Maneuvers in fact it should enter lunar orbit in a few months to finally prepare for landing the lunar flashlight Mission which launched with it not doing quite so well with the thrusters underperforming that satellite is about the size of a briefcase and will be measuring the polar surface ice from orbit if all goes well the reported problem isn't yet a game stopper but yes we're waiting to hear a little more on that as NASA performs future longer duration Thruster firings the team actually think that the underperformance might just be caused by obstructions in the fuel lines which could clear themselves so I think that wraps the week up quite nicely I want to just say a huge thank you to all of my patreon supporters and YouTube members your support and belief in what I create here with the team just means everything to us certainly couldn't have gotten here without you and all of the amazing subscribers thank you as well for sticking with us all this time I can't believe I'm heading rapidly towards 300 videos wow doesn't time fly I uploaded my first video in April of 2016 almost seven years ago where the heck did that time go your subscriptions and likes and support all this way through has helped more than you can possibly imagine so thank you for being part of this journey so many of you appeared very interested in Stoke space and all of their rocket designs as well last week which I think is pretty neat I'll talk about that in the video on the left here and on the right some other deeper dive topics including the video I mentioned earlier covering our near future propulsion options thank you everyone for watching I'll see you all in the next video
2023-01-30 12:53
