Coming Soon: Starship Propellant Transfer Demos | SpaceX Starbase Update

starship's fourth flight is inching ever closer and this week we saw SpaceX doing a load of work around the launch site to get ready for it but that's not all there's testing underway for future vehicles and we'll also be taking a look at some really interesting information from NASA about spacex's and starship's near-term plans for development of the program Audi star fans I'm Jack buer for NSF and this is your star base update [Music] [Applause] let's start off at massie's Outpost where more work is being done to prepare the site for static fire testing of ships this included lifting and lowering into place the parts for the water cooled flame diverter into the trench built for the test stand these parts have to be lowered and then welded together to form the massive structure that will hopefully deflect all of the Heat and Acoustics and pressure from the ship engines also relating to the ship static fireand during booster 13's rollout which we talk about in a minute there was an absolute parade of cement trucks going to and from Massie probably in support of pouring concrete for the static fire stand this week at massie's Outpost we also got a good view of the ship quick disconnect frame and the ship quick disconnect although given that it shouldn't disconnect during testing nor be quick I guess we can just say it's a ship umbel since it's supposed to stay fixed like the ones at the suborbital paths the location and orientation of this umbel means that we would be looking at a ship's heat shield from this perspective once ships go here for testing we were also able to get a view of the new mystery structure being built at Massie which we spotted a few weeks back it's still too early to tell what this is and while there are some theories out there we haven't yet seen it in action so we'll just have to wait and see what it's for for now I guess it's just yet another mystery structure it could be a new structural test stand or it could be something totally different for now I guess we can call it a thingamajigger or a Whatchamacallit or a doohickey but don't call it a doad now let's move to the production site for a moment here we're starting to see the buildup of the upcoming multi-level parking garage that will be located right next to the Stargate building many of the columns for the first level have already started to rise out of the ground so it'll be just a matter of time before the Ever Changing Skyline at Star base changes once again speaking of changes over at the star Factory more windows have been added to the facade at the corner of the building additionally teams have already painted all the beams and columns white just to keep it in sync with the SpaceX aesthetic which is of course black and white the black here being in the panels that are being installed for the facade cosmetic progress aside the star Factory expansion is already pumping out Hardware but most of this initial Hardware is clearly development Hardware because we see SpaceX dump all of it at the same spot on the side of the building facing the village also because there's labels on the hardware that says Dev for development that is kind of a dead giveaway Dev giveaway here the hardware doesn't last for too long and is typically scrapped within hours or days just recently we saw a double ring Barrel section out in this new scrapyard and just a couple of weeks ago we covered on this show the scrapping of another prior two- ring Barrel section as well we're not sure what these are for but SpaceX may be testing the new tooling and robot welders for the star Factory expansion by making them weld two rings at a time and then seeing if the quality is good or not as you can imagine it's kind of important that the new tooling is verified before they go ahead and use that tooling to build an entire Starship or booster as for more complete sections we recently saw a booster forward Dome section moving from the Sanchez lot all the way to this scrapyard here but that wasn't the only section moved this weekend we also saw a booster common Dome section moved from the Sanchez site Mary was able to grab a picture of the label on this one and it clearly states it is a development Barrel as indicated by the deev or Dev note on that label it also states that this is B 13.1 common Dome section so essentially a prototype common Dome section but uh that label is kind of wrong it's actually B1 14.1 common Dome section and that makes sense given the Sharpie written on there that says B1 14.1 we don't know what SpaceX may want to do with it but it's been making the Rounds Around star base for a while now so so who knows but it'll probably just be scrapped immediately to the left of it you may notice an interesting section this section is a two barrel section or a double with an elliptical Dome on top acting as a forward Dome there are also stringers around the Dome weld line visible on the left of the barrel and cutouts have already been made on this section which are often made to inspect the quality of the build you may remember we saw this section A few weeks back inside the star Factory and almost a month ago on elon's Starship presentation as well this piece of Hardware indicates we'll see a forward Dome section with the new elliptical Dome design in the near future and if you watched our video breaking down elon's presentation there's a good chance this is for version two of the ship but maybe it's actually for boosters who knows either way we'll find out over the next few months as SpaceX starts rolling out version two hardware for now though the hardware that keeps rolling is still version one but hey at least it's completed hardware and speaking of that completed Hardware booster 13 rolled out to the Massy Outpost this week for cryogenic proof testing this testing involves simulating the thrust of the inner 13 Raptor engines to make sure that the booster AF cap where those engines are attached can support the loads and doesn't leak or break while they're pushing on the structure prior the installation of the booster on this stand and it leaving Mega Bay 1 booster 13 got a nice cap on it likely to protect its forward Dome against the elements while it's outside of the mega Bay after its roll out Shawn got close-up pictures of the forward down of the booster and it looks like it has protective covers on the openings for the grid fins so you can see SpaceX is going above and beyond to keep its Hardware safe and clean while they're still in early production and testing this is a world of difference from the times where ships would be more rust and sand than anything else with a booster on the stand and the road closed B13 got underway and moved up Highway 4 to be tested at masses there are definitely some interesting changes that we've spotted on booster 13 and we'll probably do a video about them once we're close to its launch some of these changes involve adding more vents to the locks tank integrating the Raceway with the stringers at the top and bottom of the booster as well as simplifying a lot of other systems that had been retrofitted on older boosters like the new location of the flight termination system or the methane tank vents SpaceX did not waste any time and the day after it rolled out booster 13 was already undergoing its first Crow genic proof test SpaceX normally performs two or three of these tests before calling things all good normally testing one tank at a time and then doing an all-up test of both tanks in the case of this weekend's test booster 13 saw its methane tank being loaded while the liquid oxygen tank was not loaded or at the very least didn't seem to have been loaded now I know a lot of Veteran tank Watchers are probably wondering but hey Jack isn't that what happened with sn3 they had the methane tank full and the locks tank empty and it crumpled and exploded well what happened with sn3 was that the lower tank the liquid oxygen tank was depressurized not that it was not ful of cryogenic liquid so you need the pressure in the tanks to support the methane tanks weight and with booster 13 that clearly works with sn3 when you remove all the pressure from the tanks yikes now let's head here to the launch site where there's even more tanks to talk about this week and by that I'm referring to the removal of one of the vertical tank farm tanks as part of the renovations and upgrades to the existing launch infrastructure at Starbase we saw last week how SpaceX cut up and removed the outer shell of this tank and this week teams finally removed the inner tank and cut it up for scrap for those that may not remember this tank was supposed to hold liquid methane but those plans were wait for it scrapped due to the tank not adhering to the stringent regulations in Texas for containing liquid methane SpaceX then changed the purpose of this tank and used it instead for water for the tank farm pressurization system and the detonation suppression system SpaceX recently installed other tanks and vaporizers that already do this same work so this vertical tank was no longer needed and thus that's why it's being scrapped that's not the only vertical tank that'll be going away though we expect eventually all of these tanks will be scrapped in favor of the hot dog or horizontal tanks we've seen SpaceX already rolling in and installing these new horizontal tanks for liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen workers slowly hooked each of these tanks to the ground systems and in recent weeks we've started to see venting coming from each of them which already indicates they're active in working furthermore we've seen SpaceX installing the final extension to the new liquid oxygen supply line and loads and loads of new liquid oxygen deliveries something that may imply that these horizontal liquid oxygen tanks are already online and ready to be used for flight four or in other words it's likely that for flight 4 all the horizontal tanks will be in use and the vertical tanks will be offline keep in mind that being offline and being removed and scrapped are two different things it will take a while to remove all the tanks but we've already seen SpaceX to prepare for the removal of one of the other vertical tanks which was being used for liquid nitrogen these tanks may still be a part of the skyline at the launch site for a few more weeks and months but they'll most likely no longer be useful it's like my brain during a 12-hour stream it's still there it's just not very useful as we continue to get closer to Starship flight 4 work of course continues on the orbital launch Mount we've seen the comeback of the booster quick disconnect cover which covers the propellant lines on the back of the booster quick disconnect we've also seen workers putting the final touches on the legs of the orbital launch Mount reading the quick disconnect for the booster and working pretty much everywhere around the launch ring we've also seen even more Chopstick testing with the upgraded hydraulic actuator that was recently installed on the left arm of the launch Tower you can really see how much faster it moves compared to the previous configuration and it's crazy to think that in just a few months time we could be seeing a booster come back to land on those arms all of this work in testing everywhere at the launch site B well for the return of booster 11 and ship 29 for Combined full stack testing but when could that happen well taking a look at the upcoming road closures Cameron County has posted a road delay closure which is used for transport of Starship Hardware down Highway 4 and then a normal road closure that's often used for testing on the next day the text for the road delay notice indicates that this transport will take 1 hour which means this will be something rolling out the launch site and this could mean that perhaps either ship 29 or booster 11 will be rolling to the pack but given the testing closure for a day later it could be that ship 30 is going to roll out to suborbital pad B for static fire testing similar to how ship 29 rolled out there for static fire testing ahead of flight 3 speaking of ship 30 it's been inside of Mega Bay 2 for the last few weeks getting engines and being ready for static fire testing and so it would make sense that it could roll out for engine testing before flight 4 happens this would accelerate the test schedule and reduces the turnaround time between flights now of course SpaceX may have other thoughts in mind perhaps they'll be rolling out booster 12 and do static fire testing on the orbital launch Mount that is absolutely a possibility they may roll out booster 11 and ship 29 and do testing on the very next day who knows the transport closure is set for April 29th so the day this video comes out from 700 p.m. central to 11:00 p.m. central with the road closure for testing being set for the 30th from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. the best way to find out what's happening is of course by keeping your eye on Starbase live so be sure to do that and if any testing does occur you better believe we'll be going live with commentary for it so stay tuned so with the road closure dilemma in place we'll have to look at the status of ship 29 and booster 11 to guess when they might go out for testing this week we saw more progress on ship 29's heat shield with more spots now covered in tiles and more testing is underway on adhesion of those tiles looking at all of the work that still needs to be done on ship 29 I would have to guess that it'll be another week or so before it's ready to roll out but who knows maybe I'm wrong and they'll get it done faster as for booster 11 well it's still inside Mega Bay 1 and mega Bay 1 of course now has a door so it's kind of hard to peek inside but this week we did see its hot stage ring being staged outside of Mega Bay 1 which means SpaceX is getting ready to install it and Crown this booster ahead of flight an interesting change that we've spotted with the hot stage ring is that it has four pins instead of the three that are used to connect it to the ship the way the ship and booster connect with each other is not just via these pins but also Hooks and latches that are right in the middle of these guide pins these hold together the stack until it's time for them to separate ship and booster when they just retract and let the whole thing fly free we can see that the extra guide pin does not sport a hook on it so it won't take part in holding both stages together this likely means that it's just there for guiding during stacking operations which makes sense given the difficulties we've seen SpaceX have stacking vehicles in the past now you may be wondering but wait if they only had three before now they have four does that mean the ship needs an extra hole on it but the answer is no the ship actually has six receptacles that are typically lashed into the transport stands during rollouts so it's going into a hole that already exists given that a whole bunch of work remains to be done here at the launch site and both vehicles seem to still need additional work to be ready to roll out when do you think they're going to roll out could it be this week next week let us know in the comments now before we go and talk about all of the cool information we got from NASA this week we need to talk about the second launch pad and the work that's ongoing for it here in Starbase groundwork continues at the location where this new pad will be built right next to the suborbital pad we've recently seen the arrival of drills and more excavators so hopefully work can quickly start on the foundations for the future launch Tower and launch Mount as for the launch Tower I took another trip out to the port of Brownsville to check up on the tower sections that are still residing there it seems like SpaceX has installed internal stairs on them like the ones we've seen at the cape through our KSC flyovers which is a nice change compared to the stairs that are present on the current launch Tower at Starbase which run from the outside rather than the inside other than that no major developments here and we still don't know when they'll be moved to the Sanchez lot but you better believe we'll keep our eyes on them and let you know when anything happens all right now it's time for the interesting news from NASA portion of this episode this new information comes from a set of meetings of the NASA advisory Council human exploration and operations committee that took place last week on the 25th and 26th of April one of our writers Danny lent attended the meetings and recorded them we've uploaded those recordings to our L2 forum and if you want to take a look at them you can learn a lot more about interesting things like SLS Eva suits Orion and more here of course we're going to focus on the Starship side of things and what was said was really interesting during this meeting there was a presentation from Amit katria Deputy associate administrator of NASA's Moon de Mars program and he overviewed the progress of Artemis missions from 1 to 5 and even beyond for Artemis 3 of course we'll have the starship human Landing system so he went over the work already completed which was Starship flight 3 and classed it as successful saying that Starship was able to go through a full Ascent without issues and finally got into orbit don't be picky you know what they mean by orbit He also mentioned that SpaceX has already gone through the data from that flight and implemented a lot of the corrective actions on the flight four stack AKA ship 29 and booster 11 which SpaceX wants to fly before the end of May now before the end of May doesn't mean SpaceX is targeting the end of May it just means they want to fly before that time all of this is really nice to hear and makes sense given what we see going on here in Starbase the really interesting stuff came after that when he started talking about what's coming up in the near future with Starship which is of course a propellant transfer demonstration between two ships during his overview amid explained that in order to carry out this Mission SpaceX needs to develop and fly the next version of booster and ship essentially what we know as Starship version 2 he mentioned that for this type of flight SpaceX will need to develop and build a a long endurance ship which would have an augmented power system with an augmented battery capacity as well as full insulation of cryogenic systems such as vacuum jacketing of cryolin in order for fluids to not boil off all of this makes perfect sense as in the near future Starship will need to survive in space for days if not weeks in between Burns or refueling on the topic of propellant transfer demonstrations amid also mentioned during this overview that the propellant transfer demo that SpaceX carried out during flight 3 was quot Successful by all accounts and that work is still ongoing to review the data from it this is also really good to hear given that we didn't get much information about this test since flight three took place this also bodess well for the transfer demonstration Mission which will have to execute a similar transfer but between two vehicles rather than two tanks within one vehicle according to admit this propellant transfer will be done through the existing quick disconnect port on Starship he explained the rationale from SpaceX to do it in this way is that the port is well characterized IED and has been used already by the time this demo flight happens it'll have a lot more flight Heritage of course before the propellant transfer can happen ships need to Rendevous and dock with each other in orbit amid explain SpaceX will be using the same lar and radio links that they already use on Dragon when docking with the ISS there'll be some important differences in this case of course and one of them is that the Chaser Starship that is the ship that launches second will be approaching the target Starship in the direction of travel rather than From Below this is what's called a v bar approach or a Velocity bar approach which differs from the RAR approach or radial bar approach the dragon uses when docking to the ISS another cool tidbit is that the docking system between the ships will be different and will be a probe and drogue system like that on soyu or the old Apollo spacecraft according to AIT the target ship that's the one getting the fuel will have the probe and the Chaser ship that's the one giving the fuel will have the droke once both ships are ducked the propellant transfer will be executed via a set of settling thrusters to position the propellant in the right location for the transfer and pressure differential will do the rest amitt mentioned that SpaceX currently has no plans to install pumps on Starship to facilitate propellant transfer but that that could change depending on the results of this test he also mentioned that SpaceX will be thoroughly testing Starship well ahead of this flight trying to characterize important items such as the Dynamics of propellant slashing all pressure control attitude control the activation of the settling thrusters and much more he emphasized how important it is to get starship's attitude control correct and understanding the Dynamics of propellent slot if you think about it whenever Starship moves and changes its attitude the propellant inside of its tanks also moves around and then hits a wall somewhere and that creates a force on the vehicle to one side which changes its attitude and that again makes the propellant move around and so on it seems from all of this that perhaps the next few steps we'll see from SpaceX in flights Beyond flight 4 will be to nail down attitude control in space and being able to last for longer in orb bit with minimal to no boil off and low leak rates these types of missions would then serve as precursors for this propellant transfer demonstration so when will the propellant transfer test happened well we got an answer it's currently scheduled for 2025 AIT also mentioned that both of these launches would be from the same Launchpad and within 3 to four weeks from each other so there's no crazy turnaround of the orbital launch pad that's necessary for this test although it will have to be faster than what we've seen so far and of course it will be faster than waiting for the entire second orbital pad to be built all of this will not only be key to Starship being a part of NASA's emis program and finally returning humans to the Moon after more than 50 years away but also to spacex's ambition of sending Starship to Mars and building a colony there of course there's still a long and uous road for SpaceX to get to Mars but the road starts here and as always we'll be around covering everything as it happens and keeping you guys informed so while it was nice to get some news from NASA this week in regards to the propell and transfer demo we still have a lot more to learn either way we'll be here to talk to you about it so thanks for watching and as always don't forget be excellent to each other

Channel: NASASpaceflight

Views: 114,662

Keywords: Starship update, SpaceX launch preparations, NASA Artemis program, space rendezvous, propellant transfer in space, Starbase testing activities, Starship version 2 development, SpaceX future missions, Starship flight 4 anticipation, SpaceX launch infrastructure, advanced space propulsion, spacecraft docking techniques, space exploration technology, SpaceX Starship news, orbital flight test, Starship assembly, Starship cryogenic testing, spacecraft design innovations

Id: a_VlNGDkXqA

Length: 20min 40sec (1240 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024