SpaceX Starship Record Static Fire Up Next, Starbase Management Change, Cygnus NG-18, JPSS 2 & SLS
hey hey Marcus house with you here over at spacex's Star base at Boca Chica this week all the effort seems focused on the first orbital test flight of Starship with everything on site looking more refined by the day Ships coming down ships moving out and a load of intriguing stuff to cover this week cygnus ng-18 made its way up to resupply the International Space Station however there was an unexpected hiccup a final farewell to United launch alliance's Atlas 5 from Vandenberg in the spectacular jpss2 Mission SLS makes its way back to the launch pad for another attempt at its Maiden flight but whoa this doesn't look like Smooth Sailing just yet does it all this and a bunch more so suit up and boot up as we rip through another week of space action this week started off with more testing of the full stack booster 7 and ship 24. along with that some great action with ship 25 we'll start off on Sunday night though where the orbital will launch amounts of work platform was lowered down from booster 7 the next day in the morning the orbital tank farm began to vent and another cryogenic liquid flow was underway into the booster's methane tank after what seemed like another successful test half an hour later the frost line began to recede now one awesome thing that I'm not sure many may have noticed is the ship quick disconnect moving away from ship 24. just look at that cryogenic liquid pouring out that is a pretty awesome test and I suspect that must have been part of some kind of launch rehearsal another test that same day with the suborbital tank farm firing up to load cryogenic propellant into ship 25's tanks after about three hours or so of loading into the liquid oxygen tank the vehicle was depressurized to conclude the testing for that day late on Monday the orbital launch Mount work platform was moved back up to booster 7 following all of that testing the next morning the LR 11000 crane was hooked back up to ship 25 with the massive 50 meter tall Beast being lifted into the air and carefully placed onto the transport stand here this lift was actually done quite quickly as the crane was detached from the ship the same day and yep look at that it was on the Move exiting the launch site only six hours after being lifted arriving at the production facility an hour later its destination the high Bay later that evening it did quickly peek back out again with what looked like the team's swiftly removing the counterweights from the self-propelled modular transporter so that they could complete the drop-off and drive away from underneath the vehicle now you may be asking why SpaceX moved it back well the hope of course is that it is here to have some final work done along with raptor engine installation this is of course assuming that the cryogenic tests have all gone to plan and that there aren't any unknown repairs to be done perhaps as an added bonus it may also have been moved into the highway here simply for protection from the elements until booster 9 testing has been completed now while all this was happening over at the orbital launch area we see some pretty big events unfolding backtracking to earlier that same day the ship quick disconnect was disconnected from ship 24 the entire quick disconnect arm then swung away early in the afternoon the lift finally started and the full stack was no more ship 24 here being it lifted off booster 7 swung around and then lowered down onto the transport stand now I think that this d-stack seemed to go a lot quicker and smoother than what we've seen in the past and as the automation of this system has improved it is looking much more routine now after all of this quite repetitive looking cryogenic testing over the last couple of weeks it may seem like progress has halted never fear though because as we have learned from the NASA Committee just recently with all of these tests SpaceX are progressively ironing out all of the previously untested procedures now that ship 24 has been de-stacked from booster 7 I'm sure that we're going to see some fiery action again very soon hopefully this coming week in fact to prepare for all of this ship 24 was moved over to suborbital pad b and a few hours later it was lifted on top now something else quite significant also was discovered at the orbital launch site very recently potential cladding for the tower looks to have arrived in preparation to be installed we've also seen over the last two weeks some upgrades happening to the cladding mounts of the tower itself lower down the SpaceX crew took off the old mounts and installed new ones that look much thicker and stronger so yes I'm hoping that we're going to be seeing this cladding installed soon because it's going to completely change the look of the massive Tower and make it look a lot closer to the renders that we've seen by SpaceX in the past it does make a lot of sense installing this now you want that protection in place before the orbital flight attempt perhaps also for more protection against the substantial 33 engine static fire as well a rapid unscheduled disassembly and such a test could have some pretty bad consequences not just for the wiring of the Colossal Tower arms but also the propellant lines to the ship and much more on Thursday SpaceX were finally getting back to the next phase of testing that being spin Prime tests and soon to come static fires the work platform having been moved off the night before meant that the road closed nice and early the following morning the arms climbed back up the tower to prepare for this event and booster 7 there even deciding to give the audience a quick wave with the grid fins nice the booster testing started off with an ambient pressure test and propellant was loaded into the liquid oxygen tank engine chilling kicked off and not long after that check that out the fire suppression system roared to life this was it spin Prime of booster 7 engines so yes it is now fire time again as the excitement gears up for the most powerful static fire to date seven engines at once is the record and I think that we are going to see double that for the next one this is going to be epic okay so last week you may recall that I talked about this new tent going up well SpaceX sure wants this up quick as these images beautifully captured by a Starship gazer show that the team is not only rapidly adding the last steel beams but also all of the insulation required now to me the addition of this insulation means that the tent is probably going to be staying around for quite a long time I presume until this star Factory has been fully constructed remember the entire Factory is much bigger than what we see here it's eventually going to expand out to replace the large production tents over at the Megabite RGV aerial photography snapped this awesome picture peeking into the corner this is booster 10 already having at least one of its grid fins added later on in the week another one was seen heading in as well we have future ship items to update you on also the massive downcomer that we think is allocated to ship 26 was seen heading into the highway followed by it being lifted into its tank section if you recall this is the component that allows methane to flow down through the center of the liquid oxygen tank to the engines the weird thing is later in the week a downcomer was also moved out of the high Bay no longer wrapped that could be the same one or perhaps not so we're keeping an eye out to see how that progresses ship 27's payload Barrel also got its door for the pezlink dispenser and man do those dispensers look like a work of art now this is probably some of the last work required before the nose cone can be stacked on top which is sitting here in the ring yard speaking of nose cones the one for the next ship in line ship 28 is progressing quite nicely too most of the heat shield tiles have been installed now and only those around the flap Aero covers are missing and yes in this picture the nose cones for both ship 29 and ship 30 are both Visible man what a production line that we have got here now another awesome development for ship 25 is the starlink loader was moved out of the starlink processing building Wednesday afternoon a possible starlink truck the same that we saw in July backed up into the building dropping off some version 2 satellites it has been quite a while since we've last seen this with ship 24 in the high Bay so this is all great to see and I've just got to say if those live stream cameras by NASA space flight and lab Padre were not available for all of us to study there would be so much missing here likewise the photography during the week by Starship Gaza is just so neat and detailed you really get that sense of scale of these colossal rocket prototypes now all of this is because of you there in the incredible Community supporting what they do by helping with patreon or whatever method is best for them that helps them out more than you could imagine just as it does right here subscribing super useful but you know I don't want you to think that I'm pressuring you I just think that you are super amazing no matter what so you do you now while I've put the finishing touches to this segment some Media news broke yesterday I was initially reluctant to include it as I'm yet to see an official SpaceX response possibly all a bit speculative for now but if confirmed spacex's president and CEO Gwen Shotwell and vice president Mark hunkulsa reported to now be managing Starbase activities in Texas then Sam Patel the senior director is moving to Starbase Florida operations instead so quite the shake up there personally I'm seeing this as adding further resources to the program to kick it into a higher gear regardless until we hear from SpaceX leadership on this for confirmation probably need to take all that with a grain of salt okay so almost a week ago the 18th commercial resupply mission for Northrop Grumman to the International Space Station was on the pad ready to go set to lift off from Wallops Island Virginia on Sunday the 6th the countdown was progressing well with about 15 minutes to go though there was a halt to the proceedings turns out there was a fire alarm of all things but nothing to do with the pad or the rocket the issue was over at Northrop grumman's cygnus spacecraft control center instead with the staff needing to evacuate the building there was no choice but to regroup and have another go the next day finally at 5 32 a.m local time the next morning Antares roared off the pad carrying the cygnus spacecraft named SS Sally Ride after America's first woman in space there was not much seen of the ascent I did find the Telemetry here rather interesting to observe right here main engine cut off followed by the stage separation now just what was going on here with this little pirouette there was no indication of anything being paying off nominal at all this we think instead was an intentional way to burn off some extra fuel to account for the fact that the rock probably had a little bit too much performance in its first stage because the second stage is powered by a solid repellent you can't just turn them off when they get to their designated orbit they need to instead finish their burn off completely so an intentional retrograde burn to waste a little performance would make sure that it doesn't overshoot the mark very interesting anyway the SS Sally Ride was soon in orbit chasing down the International Space Station with over 3.7 tons of assorted science provisions and other cargo as well as propellant to be used for the ISS reboost Maneuvers now another interesting part of this mission is that there was an issue with one of the two solar arrays here which did not deploy Northrop Grumman with NASA made the decision not to reattempt that deployment as the single solar array can still do the job alone it does seem though that one of Antares acoustic blankets was lodged into the deployment mechanism isn't there quite unusual but it didn't seem to cause any issues after the 48 hour chase down we had Nicole here with Josh as a backup at the ISS controls the robotic armor making a successful capture about 10 meters out before the robotic Specialists back on Earth took over birthing cygnus to the earth-facing port of the unity module soon to follow the unpacking of the cargo before the usual cleanup and reloading of this spacecraft with unwanted items destined for a fiery disposal in the upper atmosphere that should happen around three months from now so what is next for Antares Northrop Grumman has issues around being able to purchase the russian-made engines of course and they are then used to power the Ukrainian made first stage due to that very limited Supply we are expecting only one more launch of this Antares 230 plus type around spring of 2023. the plan is then to work with
firefly Aerospace for the proposed Antares 330 model anticipated to fly sometime in 2024 that does leave quite a gap though in the meantime SpaceX are now going to be launching three cygnus capsules into orbit with falcon 9. over to the West Coast midweek United launch Alliance had their Atlas 5401 rocket on the pad at space launch complex 3 East at Vandenberg space force base in California now as indicated by the 401 configuration we have the four meter payload fairing zero solid rocket boosters and just the single rl-10 engine on the second stage this is for the very last time as well no more Atlas fives are going to ever launch from here again the Rideshare mission was away taking an advanced weather satellite and a technology demonstrator into space The Climb uphill here was super quick all the expected rapid sequence of events from separation to fairing jettison going well and the burn time of the second stage engine went through its lengthy burn phase as we finally came to the payload separations the primary payload for this Mission The Joint polar satellite system number two NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had the advanced polar orbiting weather satellite are destined for sun synchronous low earth orbit weather prediction capabilities with twice daily observations means short and long-term forecasts will be greatly enhanced the data Gathering from these satellites consists of imagery atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles land and ocean surface temperature measurements and ozone level readings as well it's really great to see the advancement in all of this technology personally though in this Mission I think the more interesting component of this flight is the low earth orbit flight test of an inflatable decelerator or lof-t-i-d lofted yes this was released on a re-entry trajectory soon after the jpss2 satellite reached orbit this spicy demonstration aims to gather data on the inflatable AeroShell and heat shield as it rapidly slows down to survive the punishment of re-entry following that a soft Splashdown off the east coast in Hawaii for eventual recovery now my good mate Brenton working with me here got some neat info information out of United launch alliance's CEO Tori Bruno on this early in the week this demonstrator was created as a half scale version of the real deal measuring 6 meters or 20 feet in diameter as stated here United launch Alliance plans to recover the first stage engine compartment for Vulcan in the future using this technology I just can't wait to see that now as I mentioned quickly in last weekend's video NASA's huge space launch system rocket had just rolled back to pad 39b that arrived around 8 30 a.m Eastern Time on November the 4th emerging from the Vehicle Assembly Building or VAB roughly nine hours earlier this sure is quite an impressive sight while the trip back to the pad was underway though out at Sea a tropical depression was forming it was deemed an okay risk to proceed with plans to leave the VAB but soon this weather was developing into tropical storm Nicole now hang on this all sounds eerily familiar doesn't it weather forecasts at the time indicated that although storm activity will impact the launch site wind gusts were not expected to exceed the structural limit of the SLS where there is a Fickle Beast though and this all changed as the wick progressed was it time to instead head back to the VAB more on that in just a moment but first today's video is supported by under lucky stars they make these incredible personalized star maps that show the unique alignment of the stars in a place and time chosen by you I organized this one here for our home all set up on the day my wife and I got married and it is such a great Keepsake to have such a map could reflect any important event in your life though another obvious option would have been having one for the kids birthday as well but it can be anything meaningful to you all you need to do is enter the location and time of the special moment that you wish to commemorate and then under lucky stars will show you exactly how these stars look at the time time with an amazing print of a map of the sky that shows the constellations and star placements for you on your special moment there are over 15 designs to choose from which will be printed on museum quality Thick Art paper at 300 DPI quality beautiful durable and then you have the frame selection six elegant options to select from so it's very customizable I picked the moon style here and the black frame with mounting but you do you under lucky stars have a proprietary method of generating these star Maps also verified by NASA astrophysicists to ensure accuracy as a side note under lucky stars also help support the international dark sky Association working to protect the night sky for present and future Generations these are a great heartfelt personal and memorable display very unique and they are also providing you with a 10 discount to make it even more special just head to underluckystars.com Marcus and use code Marcus to get your loved one a unique gift the link is is in the description okay so the tropical storm got wild with measurements getting up to 82 miles per hour in the aftermath the orange rocket appeared okay but there is minor damage around needing inspection and attention the launch date had already been bumped from the 14th to the 16th as a result of the weather but I suspect things may still slip with SLS having launched backup dates of November the 19th and 25th anything beyond that is going to mean re-evaluating that flight termination system like we saw in September on the plus side though while the investigation into the hydrogen leak ultimately found No Smoking Gun confidence in the management of the propellant loading is much higher now on top of that the countdown process has been adjusted to include more time in the holds and there has been some changes in the propellant loading timelines to help with any potential further issues should the launch still not happen by the final backup window of November the 25th the SLS is expected to remain at the pad for for a December launch opportunity now this is where things could get quite interesting the certification of the two solid rocket boosters these were stacked in early 2021 and the deadline for their use yet again expires on December 19th and 14th respectively NASA would then need to reassess at that point let's instead hope that a November launch goes to plan because if we are still covering this in December who knows how much longer it could be delayed so that is about it for the week a little excitement from Australia as well which I'll get to in just a second but a big thank you to you for being here watching all this way through each and every week from what I've ever been able to tell from the mystery that is the YouTube algorithm the watch time seems to be the most important metric to determine how far these videos are shared even more than likes subscriptions and all that stuff you make this channel what it is and the team and I super appreciate it I can tell you right now we've got all of the incredible patrons and YouTube members here helping us out other great individuals buying the merch as well all super amazing of you so as a sign off here here is a little slice of excitement from my neck of the woods Gilmore space Technologies in Queensland Australia dropped the video early this week demonstrating serious a hybrid rocket engine which they state is the most powerful engine ever developed in Australia this needs unit will power their australian-made aerys rocket to orbit next year if all goes to plan the engine has passed the final qualification test here and also at the same time this was a test to destruction boom there it goes let's just check that out in slow-mo serious here is around 115 kilonewtons and there's going to be four of these to power the first stage of that aerys rocket now it is a total of 460 kilonewtons or almost 47 tons of force that sits somewhere between astra's rocket at about 355 kilonewtons and Firefly Alpha at around 736 this style of engine is typically seen as one with more flexibility than say solid rocket motors which once you light them up running until they burn out although a hybrid uses a solid grain fuel of some sort there is a separate oxidizer which can simply be shut off or throttled down as needed they are also typically safer to handle than liquid propellants which are normally needing to be pressurized a great deal especially for cryogenic liquid propellants the hybrids here are seen a lot of the time as a nice Middle Ground so hopefully we'll get to see the aerys rocket preparing to fly very soon now perhaps you are interested in some of the deeper dive topics covered here on screen they are not the typical weekend news videos and it seems like people like these even more a lot of the time we love making them as well so let me know if any topic interests you more than any other and thanks again for watching all this way through have a terrific weekend and I'll see you for the next video
2022-11-13 20:38
