TRANSKRYPCJA VIDEO
What about it!?
SpaceX Reveals Flight 6 Starship! Possible Launch Date Available! Can They Do It?
Opis wygenerowany przez Skrybot
Dla tego filmu nie wygenerowano opisu.
Transkrypcja wygenerowana przez Skrybot
Flight 6 soon? The dust has now settled from the fifth flight of SpaceX's Starship, so how did the launch site fare? SpaceX turns all of its attention to the upcoming Flight 6. How long until we see Starship take to the skies again? SpaceX launches its biggest mission yet, and I am not talking about Starship. My name is Felix. Welcome to What about it!? Let's dive right in! Starship Updates They did it! SpaceX has once again made the impossible possible, and we watched it happen in real time. After the historic launch that was Flight 5, Booster 12 is still in one piece.
It's been a few days since the launch, but it's still hard to register what we saw. After lifting off from the tower, this vehicle successfully flew to space and returned, while landing on the chopsticks. So, the booster survived. However, that's not the only piece of equipment that needs to survive for rapid reusability to be possible. Both the booster and the ground hardware need to survive launch and landing for rapid reusability to be possible. And it looks like quite a bit of the launch hardware still functions.
We are able to tell that, because shortly after Booster 12 landed, it was placed back onto the orbital launch mount, showing that at least the majority of the hold down clamps are still functioning. This also shows that despite many of the outer Raptor engines warping, the booster's body kept its shape well enough to still fit on the orbital launch mount. It's hard to tell exactly how functional much of the hardware is after the launch, but thanks to our photographers and Redline's help, we were able to get some incredible pictures of the launch site that can help shed some light on how well it survived. Let's do the analysis.
For starters, the launch mount looks more beat up than after previous launches. You can see here by the charring that it appears the booster didn't quite land directly on the center of the launch mount, but just off to the side, leaving a nice scorch mark at the top of the OLM. Despite the landing only using three Raptor engines, those engines are pointed much closer to the launch mount than during a launch and are held there for longer, meaning the landings are just as likely to cause damage as the launches.
We can also see that the booster quick disconnect once again looks toasty, as it received almost a direct blast from the engines at takeoff and now at landing as well. Yay! We can also see that some of the commodity piping around the base of the tower has had its insulation damaged, but this is fairly standard at this point. It's reasons like this, that SpaceX has decided to overhaul the design of the next orbital launch mount, which is currently being built next to the second launch tower. This new mount might even be modular, meaning that it can be taken out of the flame diverter with mobile transporters or SPMTs and changed before each launch.
This way SpaceX could shift to a launch mount rotation, giving teams more time to refurbish the mount itself and in the meantime just use a second one. Rotate them. But we're not at that point yet. For flight 6, SpaceX will very likely still use this first generation launch mount. Looking up at the ship's quick disconnect, it does appear to be in better shape this launch than some of the previous launches, but it is still pretty beaten up. We also thought it looked good on previous launches before SpaceX decided to replace the majority of its piping, but even now we can see, that it will likely need some repairs.
Moving our attention now to the fuel farm, we can see nothing. For once after launch there has been no damage whatsoever to the fuel farm, and now that the pesky vertical tank farm is gone, hopefully it'll stay that way. During this flyover, we could also see teams all over the launch mount inspecting it. Shortly after we landed, scaffolding began being placed all over the top of the mount and a dance platform SpaceX uses for inspections was lifted into place to allow for easier access. Thank you so much to Redline Helicopter Tours for giving us this bird's eye view.
Did you know you can get the same views that you see in our videos? Just go to redlineheli. com slash Felix and snag a sweet 25 dollars off your own flight. The views are unforgettable. In these photos, there is something else that stands out. The booster is gone. Yup. After some slight delays possibly caused by technical issues on one of the self-propelled modular transporters, the booster transport stand finished its roll down the road to the launch site. From here, booster 12 was placed on top of it before being rolled back to the production site for post flight inspections and possibly even repairs before a second flight.
Our photographers were on the ground and in the air with our very own Sean Doherty catching the roll. Thanks to those close-ups, we can see just how intact the booster really is. Starting with the most obvious, the missing chime part, which disintegrated shortly after the landing burn was initiated. From what we can tell, it doesn't appear any of the internal components within the chime are damaged. It seems only the aerodynamic covers are missing. It's hard to tell exactly what caused this chime to disintegrate. However, given the lack of visible malfunctions within, it is possible that it was caused purely by aerodynamic forces during landing, which were exacerbated at engine ignition.
The booster quick disconnect panel, where the booster is fueled before liftoff, also seems to be in pretty good condition after turning into a flame thrower during landing. So, it appears that despite the dramatic pyrotechnic display, there were no visible negative effects from that fire. The last area of interest are the catch pins, as these need to support the entire weight of the booster and the residual propellant while landing. And it looks like they're in an amazing shape, with only a minor bend being visible on one of them. Clearly, SpaceX's earlier tests on the B14.
1 test tank paid off, as these pins look to be in even better shape than most Falcon landing legs after a landing. Overall, the booster seems to be in incredible shape, and other than the aforementioned engine bell warping, it is likely this booster could refly with only minor repairs. But the goal of Starship is to require no repairs, just inspections. Considering the problems currently facing this booster, the solutions will likely be simple compared to what's already been achieved.
Of course, now that the booster is back, teams are going to inspect every inch of it to find any other ways they can improve and to make sure they solved all of the previous problems such as filter clogging. So, we've spent quite a bit of time talking about Flight 5, but that's already old news. Here comes the big one though. Flight 6 is likely right around the corner. But before I tell you more about that booster, we've looked into our channel metrics, and there are over 2 million returning monthly viewers who have not subscribed yet. We just hit half a million subscribers.
Help us improve the channel even further by double checking that you've hit that subscribe button, so you don't miss our updates. And while you're at it, give us a like and become a wise supporter. Why? Because you'll gain access to a massive amount of extra content. With it, you get access to daily new Starbase photo galleries, including all those we've posted so far. Satellite, aerial and ground photos more than 400 posts in the past two years alone with up to seven picture galleries per week. Insights, chats with me, you name it.
Thank you so much, you rock! So, what's left to do before the next flight? And maybe more importantly, is there any info yet on when to expect Flight 6? The first thing that we are already seeing SpaceX do is repair the launch site. They start at work immediately. Based on our pictures, it is clear that the launch site is in even better shape than after any other flight, especially now that those vertical tanks are gone. Despite this, many repairs are likely still needed, as is unfortunately standard following a Starship launch. Looking at previous flights, it took SpaceX around a month to complete these repairs.
So, assuming that they have made progress in reducing the damage done to the launch site, any repairs or inspections should hopefully be done before the middle of next month. These constant repairs are the reason why SpaceX engineers opted to completely overhaul the launch mount design. The new design will include a flame diverter and many upgrades to the mount itself, which we will go into much more detail on in a future episode.
So, what about the flight hardware? What about the Flight 6 Starship? I love the sound of that! Assuming SpaceX doesn't refly Booster 12, the booster for this next flight, Booster 13, is currently in the Mega Bay and should have all 33 of its engines installed by now. This booster was cryo tested all the way back in April, before it received its engines, so it's likely SpaceX will focus on repairing the orbital launch mount, so they can roll the booster to the launch site to perform a static fire as soon as possible. Whatever upgrades SpaceX wants to implement on this booster will likely be minor enough to where they'll be done before the launch mount is ready.
SpaceX has already proven that the design they have works. Assuming this static fire goes well, the booster should be ready for flight as soon as the O. L. M. is ready for a static fire. Depending on how much repair work is needed for the orbital launch mount, this should either be late October or at the beginning of November. Given that it could already hold a booster, it is likely to be relatively early. So that leaves one last piece. The ship. Ship 31 will likely be the piece of hardware that holds up this next flight.
Despite this vehicle having already completed all necessary testing, including a static fire just last month on September 19th, the heat shield for this ship still needs quite a bit of work. Yup. Just like for Ship 30, this ship's heat shield is receiving a massive overhaul, with the entire heat shield being torn off and replaced. However, despite SpaceX starting this process around two months ago, very little progress has been made. This is likely because SpaceX was waiting to see how Ship 30's heat shield held up to re-entry during flight 5. And seeing the results, it's likely SpaceX will want to make even more upgrades to this ship's heat shield.
Looking at all factors, we could be looking at a launch as early as the middle of next month, meaning SpaceX may be able to fly flight 6 before the original flight date given by the FAA. We also got some first info from sources that SpaceX might be tracking November 11th. If true, this is a very early date and should be seen as a very loose guide. What do you think? Will SpaceX be able to launch in just a month from now or will something hold them back? Give me your flight 6 launch date estimate in the comments below. Let's see who gets the closest.
The ship being the deciding factor for the launch date would make the most sense, seeing as SpaceX has now shown that the rest of its architecture works surprisingly well. The Starship is now the missing piece of the puzzle and will likely be the focus of flight 6 and many more until SpaceX feels ready for a catch attempt. With its capability to reuse the booster now, SpaceX will likely ramp up testing for the ship as it attempts to meet the many deadlines it has set, including a Luna and Mars landing in just 2 years.
However, as they begin to reuse boosters, the bottleneck for speed will pretty likely become how quickly they can produce ships to test them. And seeing as how Ship 31 is likely to be the last of the Block 1 ships, as Ship 32 has basically been abandoned at this point, how are the Block 2 ships coming along? Well, after very few updates following its flap installation during the live stream for flight 5, we got a pretty nice surprise as SpaceX shared this. Yep, that is Ship 33. We only got a quick glimpse of it, but from that we can see it looks almost complete.
Other than a few missing tiles near the top and the base, the entire heat shield looks perfect. Better than that of Ship 31. In this clip, SpaceX still has quite a bit of scaffolding built up around the ship, especially near the base, so it's clear that they were still working near the aft end, possibly on the heat shield of the aft flaps, which will still be exposed to quite a bit of plasma during reentry. However, looking at the other photos SpaceX shared during this montage, it is clear that this was made a few weeks ago, with the most recent footage being from late September.
Therefore, it's likely that Ship 33 is even further in development now, and we may even see it roll to masses for a cryogenic proof test any day now. Yes! The pace at which SpaceX is working is truly breathtaking. This ship was first rolled out just a couple of months ago, around mid-July. We can also see that SpaceX clearly has some spare capacity to work on more ships in this bay, and as the main portion of the Star Factory nears completion, this capacity will likely be used up. In fact, the next Block 2 ship is already well into development, and shortly before Flight 5 we saw this.
Ship 34 has now officially started its stacking in Mega Bay 2. Its first dome section, the forward dome of the liquid methane tank, was rolled over to the Mega Bay before being lifted onto the turntable and being stacked with the payload section. We should begin to see the rest of its sections following soon, as SpaceX completes its second Block 2 ship. Woohoo! How likely do you think it is that SpaceX might end up launching Ship 33 on Flight 6? Another question needing answers in the comments let's discuss.
Flight 5 was crazy, and as if successfully launching Starship for a fifth time and catching it wasn't already enough to make this a history-making week in Spaceflight, SpaceX decided to try and one up themselves by launching arguably its biggest mission to date with a Falcon Heavy. After a few days of weather delays caused by a record-breaking hurricane, Europa Clipper finally had its chance to launch. This mission aims to study the smallest of Jupiter's four Galilean moons, Europa. Despite this moon being the smallest of the main Galilean moons of Jupiter, it's still roughly comparable in size to our own moon, and it may hold many amazing secrets.
It's suspected that Europa has a massive subsurface ocean that is heated by Jupiter's and the other Galilean moon's gravitational pulls. People who watch my Starship Flight 5 livestream might already know this, my trusty Orion capsule stress relief ball, and this I'll use to explain this to you. They basically massage Europa with their pull, creating heat in the process because of this it is a prime target for the search for life outside of Earth. Warm water. That's why NASA has put so much effort into this mission. It is the agency's largest interplanetary mission ever, with a price tag of around 5 billion dollars, about double the initial plan. That's not good.
And thus this was a nail-biting launch. After all the delays and cost overruns, it was finally time with the clock counting down to zero before Falcon Heavy once again lit its 27 Merlin engines and lifted off the pad the day after Flight 5 took off from Starbase. The side boosters were completely out of fuel just over three minutes into the flight. For this mission they needed every bit of performance they could get out of this marvel of engineering, so these two side boosters, which had flown the Space Force's X-37B, the Psyche mission and many others to space were left to crash into the Atlantic Ocean.
This was all for a good cause, as just a minute after the booster separated, the center core cut its engines and left the upper stage to do its thing. The second stage then burned for another four minutes before entering a short parking orbit for about an hour until it once again lit its engines to put this probe on an interplanetary trajectory. Europa Clipper is now on its way to this Pandora's box of a moon. Looking around our solar system, Europa has long been considered one of the most likely places for extraterrestrial life. Aliens. It's likely that if there is anything there, it will just be small microbes. However, even that would change everything.
As if we find anything there, it would prove that our universe could be teaming with life. This mission is likely one of our best chances to find that life, which may make it the most important mission SpaceX has ever launched. Unfortunately as powerful as Falcon Heavy is, Europa Clipper is a gigantic spacecraft that weighs nearly 7 tons. In fact, the original plan was to have it launch on SLS. The original plan would have sent the probe directly to Jupiter. It would have arrived about three years after launch. However, with Falcon Heavy, because it is smaller, Europa Clipper needs to take a different trajectory.
It now involves using the Earth and Mars for gravity assists, adding an extra five and a half years to the arrival date. This unfortunately means that Europa Clipper will not begin its mission at Jupiter until 2030. On the bright side, going with Falcon Heavy instead of SLS likely saved NASA a couple billion dollars, which it can now use for other efforts. But for now, Europa Clipper is on its way and thanks to SpaceX's work, its hunt for life is now one step closer. Good luck Europa Clipper and thank you to everybody, who's worked and continues to work on making this revolutionary mission happen.
You rock! With everything that's been going on, it's been hard to keep track of everything at times, which is why some of you might not realize yet another huge mission launched shortly before Starship. Not to be outdone by the launches of its rocket siblings, Falcon 9 took to the skies carrying its own groundbreaking mission. The Hera probe for the European Space Agency is on its way as well. This launch took place between two record-breaking hurricanes that hit the state of Florida, but fortunately that didn't stop this mission. Neither did a mishap investigation. The FAA needed to grant an exemption for this launch because it had only a short window in which it could fly.
This probe is an asteroid surveyor, and it is now on its way to study the asteroid pairs Didymos and Dimorphis. Wait, wait, why do these names sound familiar? This asteroid pair is the same pair that was the target for NASA's DART mission, which was a kinetic impactor test in 2022. Hera is the follow-up mission of that. Its goal is to study the asteroid Dimorphis, which was hit by the impactor to see how this event affected the asteroid and what we can learn.
It will do this by analyzing the now exposed material to get a good idea of the composition of this asteroid, as well as getting much more precise measurements to determine just how much material was ejected and how that impacted its orbit. All of this is crucial information for future efforts to redirect potentially dangerous asteroids away from Earth and to learn more about their structure. Wow! In just the last week we saw the launch of a mission to a moon, an asteroid and even back to the launch site.
So, why don't we round this up with an update on a mission to another planet? How about Mars? Or I guess in this case it would be a mission from Mars, because Rocket Lab revealed that they had been awarded a contract to study ways to complete a sample return from Mars by 2040. This would be a way to replace NASA's current plan for sample return missions, as the current cost and complexity has ballooned far beyond NASA's original projections and could risk jeopardizing other missions if this were allowed to continue. Rocket Lab joins many other companies such as SpaceX and Lockheed Martin, which were awarded similar research contracts earlier this year.
Now Rocket Lab has been added to that pool as well. It's possible that Rocket Lab was able to use the knowledge and experience they will be gaining from the Escapade missions which are launching to Mars in spring of 2025 after being delayed due to Blue Origin's new Glenn rocket not being ready. Rocket Lab now has a chance to show NASA they are ready for such high rated missions. It's incredible to think that we are living in a time when so many major space events are happening and things are only getting started. Mars just got a lot closer, my friends. That's it for today. Remember to smash that like button, subscribe for more.
This is what fuels the algorithm. This is how you can help us for free. Check out our epic shirts in your favorite space nerd store. A new Raptor design and our epic flight 5 design are both up. Grab an early Christmas gift. Link is in the description and in the card you should see now. And if you want to train your space IQ even further, watch this video next to continue your journey. Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you again in the next episode. It's hard. It's hard. Believe me. I got some stuff on my leg here. Sorry.
I've got a heart in an announcement. Europa, the hot tub moon. .
S K R Y B O T
Skrybot. 2023, Transkrypcje video z YouTube
Informujemy, że odwiedzając lub korzystając z naszego serwisu, wyrażasz zgodę aby nasz serwis lub serwisy naszych partnerów używały plików cookies do przechowywania informacji w celu dostarczenie lepszych, szybszych i bezpieczniejszych usług oraz w celach marketingowych.