Hey Starship Addicts my name is ZacK Golden
and welcome to another CSI Starbase Deep Dive Investigation. We have a lot to cover today so I'm
going to attempt to get into this as quickly as possible all of you - uhhh returning viewers - go
ahead and take this time to throw a bag of popcorn in the microwave because this is that episode I've
been warning you about for the last two months and it's going to get a little intense. For everyone
else, if this is your first time clicking on a CSI Starbase thumbnail...Then Hello, and welcome
to the channel. Thanks for giving us a chance! I don't usually do this but because of the
length of this episode I feel like I should give you a fair warning about what you're
walking into out of respect for your time if you're looking for a quick summary of
this week's events at Starbase while SpaceX is preparing for the upcoming 33 engine Static
Fire test you have come to the wrong place my friend because this is deep dive territory. This
feature-length episode that you've just stumbled upon is meant for people who want to get a
real understanding of the serious challenges that SpaceX is up against as they prepare for
this first ever 33 engine static fire test so what is it that makes this launch system
so complex and dangerous? What Solutions has SpaceX come up with over the last three months in
order to enable themselves to safely pull off a 33 inches Static Fire without destroying the vehicle
and launch system in the process? Will these Solutions be enough for the first orbital flight
test or are there some important indications that we should be on the lookout for before we even
start to get our hopes up? If you're unsure of how to answer any of these questions then
you might want to take a seat and buckle up because as soon as the rest these people get back
from making that popcorn it's about to go down welcome to CSI Starbase [Music] You know,I want to let you all in on
a secret. Our agency puts a massive amount of time resources and energy into gathering the
information and content required in order to explain these Advanced topics. There will
be many times where you will spot a clear opening for me to just skip straight to
the answer but I want you to understand that it's my personal mission that no matter
what level of experience you have whether you just discovered Starship yesterday or you're
a talented engineer who could probably get a job working for SpaceX tomorrow you will learn
something that you didn't know before today. This deep dive investigation is structured for
you to understand it without ever having seen any of the past CSI Starbase episodes. However, if
you want to maximize this experience I recommend going back and watching all six of these episodes
if you make it all the way to the end of this one. Those of you who have already seen these episodes
will pick up on many subtle details and hints that will be missed otherwise for the sake of time I
will not re-explain things that have already been thoroughly covered in those episodes but I will
correct the record on any past speculation that may have turned out to be false. On August 16th of
this year I released this deep dive investigation. Booster 7 explosion a detailed examination of the
complex mechanical systems involved. In this deep dive event I explained how the orbital launch
Mount was constructed in particular we discussed most of the major internal and external systems
and components that work together to make this the most advanced launch system on the planet
this includes the gigantic hold down clamps the Raptor quick disconnects that are used to spin up
the outer 20 Raptor boost engines and the igniter panels on the side of the launch Mount which are
responsible for the actual ignition of those same 20 engines. Using this information we were able to
get a better understanding of what we believe went wrong during the booster 7 testing anomaly that
occurred back in July. The only problem is some of the conclusions that we came to were a bit
flawed because there is one important feature of the orbital launch pad that we have not yet
discussed. The feature I'm referring to is the cryogenic propellant vapor recovery system if this
system is working properly and SpaceX should be able to recover most of the methane used during
these tests there are however a few special cases where recovery is near impossible. The first case,
is during the initial depressurization of the methane tank at the start of detanking operations.
Second, is the obvious loss of any methane consumed by the engines during a static fire test
and the Third special case is during the spin-up process of the 33 Raptor 2 engines as I mentioned
during that episode. This is the part of the investigation where I believe we left some major
holes in the information that need to be filled, in order to do that we need to approach this
from a different angle than we did last time. Once we establish a basic understanding of how the
vapor recovery system works we can re-evaluate the explosive incident and get to the bottom of
what really happened. The last thing I want to say before we get too deep into this is that if
you learned something that you didn't know prior to today by the time this hourglass runs out in
three minutes, then please consider supporting CSI Starbase by hitting that like button. One of the
most frequent comments I see in these episodes is: Why is this the first time I'm seeing this channel
my recommendations? Well the reason is because the YouTube algorithm has to receive a massive amount
of bribes in the form of likes before it decides that the content is worth sharing to a broader
audience. So thanks to each and every one of you who have contributed to the growth of this
channel just by sending a thumbs up our way. All right let's start from the beginning. The reason
that SpaceX would need a vapor recovery system, is because without it they would end up venting
off a large volume of methane into the atmosphere for hours at a time during the propellant
loading process of the booster and Starship. But of course, you can never recover 100 of the
gas so they will still probably emit some methane during spin Prime and static fire tests. If these
escaped gases were responsible for the explosion then we need to know exactly where they're coming
from. An important clue to answering this question actually came to me while discussing this
topic with Marcus House a few months ago. So, are you sure that the methane gas is being leaked out because that's used as
one of these spin-up gases isn't it? Yeah I don't know Marcus.
It's really hard to prove this Theory considering that it would
be near invisible if that's the case. Well I don't really understand how it
could be invisible because according to the program environmental analysis, SpaceX
is expecting to release up to seven metric tons of methane into the atmosphere during
launch and static fire testing operations. I mean that's quite a lot Mate. Surely we
would be able to see seven tons of methane. Yeah I mean that might sound like a lot
especially when you consider the fact that a larger LNG tanker truck can hold about 28
tons of liquid methane. So that's a quarter of a tanker but when you consider that
the booster and Starship require roughly a thousand tons of methane in order to fill
both tanks %0.7 of the total seems pretty low. Well unfortunately anything above zero
percent loss is going to come with some kind of impact to the environment
which we just can't really ignore... Yeah but we will for now because this
investigation is about mitigating the explosive risks that come with operating a system
like this not the environmental ones. I don't think you need ME, to tell YOU, that this ENTIRE
OPERATION is extremely complex and high risk... Did you just steal that quote from -
Marcus, I think I'm going to need to examine this methane recovery system to see
if there's something I'm missing here but it's going to take a while to gather the
required material to properly explain this Alright mate well I look forward to hearing it! Alright so here we are two months later
and I realized that in order to explain the methane recovery system and also track
down where the seven tons of methane is coming from we need to go step by step
through the propellant loading process. Due to the complexity of the methane side of
the tank farm it's going to be much easier to explain what's happening over there if we start
off by looking at the liquid oxygen side first. See the thing is, in a way the exact
same process is occurring on both sides of the tank farm at the exact same time.
There are a few key differences though, and those are very important to understand. Obviously there's zero percent chance that
SpaceX is gonna let me in here in order to give y'all a tour. This process is far too
dangerous to even have employees on site while it's occurring. Let alone random YouTubers
like me, even with the proper safety gear on. But, I did come prepared. So yeah - we
don't want to get arrested for trespassing, because that would be bad instead thanks
to Andi, creator of the Starbase Simulator game we don't have to take this risk because we
can do it virtually. Now that Andi has updated the game in order to include the tank farm
propellant loading process, we're actually going to be able to see WAY more than we would,
if we took the guaranteed jail sentence route. Hopefully by the end of this you will
better understand what you're seeing at various times during future testing events Okay that should be everything
I think I'm ready to do this So starting off from the beginning this is the
orbital tank farm. Andi has made it easier for us to visualize what's Happening Here by color coding
all of the different liquids. So in blue, we have the liquid oxygen, green is liquid nitrogen,
and over there in the horizontal storage tanks we have liquid methane which is colored Orange.
The cryogenic liquid oxygen is stored in these three tanks which are connected together
in pretty much every way imaginable. These are referred to as GSE tanks which
stands for ground support equipment. These nine meter wide tanks have a 1.5 meter
thick layer of insulation in between the inner storage tank and the outer cover that functions as
a jacket. This helps keep the fluid at cryogenic temperatures for extended periods of time.
But no matter how much insulation you have, there is always going to be a little boil
off as it slowly begins to warm over time. As LOX transitions from a liquid to a
gas it drastically increases in volume, which simultaneously increases the pressure
inside of the tank. Because these tanks are connected together, they each experience
this pressure increase at the same time. Think of them as conjoined GSE triplets. The tanks
are designed to operate within a certain pressure range just like the Starship and booster. As
the pressure inside of these tanks begins to approach the upper limit, a relief valve will
open on all three tanks at the same time and they will vent the excess gas through this bleed
off manifold which has a vent stack attached to the first LOX tank. If you visit Starbase you
will occasionally see this venting at random times during the day as the pressure regulation
system kicks in. 24 hours a day and seven days a week SpaceX is slowly losing oxygen out
of these tanks which is important to note for later when we talk about the methane system.
The same principles apply on that side as well, although the way it is handled is completely
different. Before transferring the liquid oxygen from the GSE tanks all the way over to the
booster sitting on the launch mount. It must first undergo a super chilling process in order
to shrink the size of the oxygen molecules. This increases the total mass of oxygen that
is able to be loaded onto the booster. In order to do this SpaceX runs
the liquid oxygen through a set of heat exchangers designed to
super cool the liquid molecules. This is a special type of heat
exchanger called a kettle reboiler. Before the testing begins - and sometimes even
before the road is closed - these tanks will begin to fill up with liquid nitrogen until the internal
heat exchanger coil is completely submerged. This isn't exactly what the coil looks like
but it's been simplified for this demonstration we actually don't get to see this happen anymore
on the liquid oxygen side because the liquid oxygen Kettle reboilers are now completely
insulated on the outside. So thankfully, we have this animation from Andi to help us out.
Moving on to the next step, there is a massive pipe that connects the outlet on the bottom
of the tanks for discharging liquid oxygen. On a normal day, these pipes
are empty - or - flooded up to this point. Once this massive red valve is open, the liquid oxygen will begin to flow through
it and into these three pumps shown here. The problem is you don't want to start pumping
right away as soon as the valve opens. The reason is because the empty pipes have been sitting
out in the hot Texas Sun all day and even though they're insulated, after a long period of time
without being in use these will become very warm. When the valve opens, the cryogenic liquid
oxygen will immediately begin to vaporize on contact with the warm steel. This means
that you must slowly flood the pipes all the way up to the pumps and allow them to
cool down so the liquid stops boiling off. The temperature inside these pipes will
need to drop down to at least negative 273 degrees Fahrenheit in order for the
LOX to stop boiling off on contact. If these pumps were to turn on before
the pipes have a chance to cool down, there's a high probability of cavitation occurring
-which would cause some pretty serious damage. I've explained this on past episodes, so if you
want to learn more about pump cavitation I've put a link in the description of this video again.
[Music] After the liquid oxygen leaves the pumps,
it follows this path until it reaches the upper manifold and then splits off
into each of the heat exchangers. We are only simulating one pump, and
one heat exchanger here in order to make it easier to understand. As soon as the
fluid reaches the kettle reboiler the warmer liquid oxygen begins to transfer heat over to
the nitrogen causing it to start boiling off. There are no valves that control the release
of nitrogen gas out of the back of these Kettle boilers. As soon as enough pressure
is built up inside, it will push open the flaps on the back of the exhaust vents.
During this phase they will begin belching out large clouds of nitrogen and then closing
again until the pressure builds up once more. As the volumetric flow rate of LOX that goes
through the pumps and through the coils increases, so will the amount of vapor coming
out of the back of these vents. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves though
because this is still just the prime-up phase. Once the initial flow of liquid oxygen is passed
through these four Kettle boilers, it exits through the bottom and recombines into a single
tube, and then sends it over to the fluids bunker. The valves inside of this bunker will probably be
closed at this point in order to allow the pipes to fill up with liquid oxygen and cool down. Just
like before, I believe that during and immediately after the process of flooding the pumps you will
see a large amount of venting occur in this area, as SpaceX releases the vaporized oxygen gas -
which is officially referred to as "GOX" (Gaseous Oxygen)- off to the side of the fluids bunker.
This is known as a bleed off valve, but we refer to this one as the grass vent just to make
it easier to distinguish it from the others. The grass vent happens as GOX
is continuously vented from the system until it starts to turn into a liquid, as the pipes have finally chilled down enough to
allow the liquid to reach the next control valve. At this point, the large valve can be opened and
the grass vent that leads off into the side of the bunker can be closed. From here, the liquid
oxygen must travel underground for several hundred feet before it reaches the bottom of the launch
Mount. Using this RGV image from November of 2021 we can see the path that it takes to get there.
Once it reaches the OLM (Orbital Launch Mount) it travels up the legs and then goes into
the back of the booster quick disconnect. Not only is this a long distance but the
liquid oxygen supply pipe shown here is insanely large. Looking at the SpaceX
workers for comparison, you can see that they are roughly 20 inches in diameter.
When you consider the thickness of the pipe walls it really becomes hard to imagine exactly
how much steel we're talking about here that needs to be chilled down before the liquid oxygen
pumps can start pushing fluid into the booster. If they were to immediately start pumping
fluid as soon as the bunker control valves open - the liquid oxygen would start boiling
off so quickly and violently - you might not be able to purge it off in time.
Keep in mind that the expansion ratio of liquid oxygen is 1:861. In other words one
liter of liquid oxygen will expand into 861 liters of gaseous O2 once it's transitioned
from the liquid to gas phase is complete. So just like last time after the valve is opened
liquid oxygen will begin to trickle into the system - slowly making its way to the launch
Mount. This makes it so the boil off within the pipes occurs slowly like it does here in
this experiment from the TKOR YouTube channel. On the flip side, this is an example
of what you don't want happening. This volcano effect can cause dramatic increases in pressure that are much more
difficult to predict and manage. Just as before, there needs to be a bleed-off
valve located at the end of this pipe section in order to relieve the pressure from the gas
as it continues to boil off inside of the pipes. If you have ever watched a Super Heavy
Booster test on the orbital launch Mount then you'll be very familiar with this one.
It's located on the side of the OLM and is controlled by this blue valve actuator,
which makes it stick out like a sore thumb. When this valve opens gaseous
oxygen begins to flow out of the vent the intensity of the flow
gradually increases as the liquid oxygen slowly makes its way from the
fluids bunker to the launch Mount. When the fluid finally reaches the vent
it's extremely obvious. The Vapor Cloud that started off as a tail extending
from the launch Mount suddenly turns into a tidal wave that stretches all the
way to the other side of the launch site. In order to make the cloud dissipate faster - and to prevent the liquid oxygen from
pooling up underneath the launch Mount - SpaceX has incorporated a special
nozzle onto the end of the bleed off valve. When we look at it closely, we can see three
rotating blades at the end of the nozzle which break up the fluid flow causing
it to Fan out in a cone-shaped cloud, instead of falling to the ground like
water coming out of a garden hose. After several minutes of confirmed liquid flow, the bleed off valve is closed and
liquid oxygen can begin flowing up into the gigantic flex hose and then to
the back of the booster quick disconnect. Hopefully now that you understand this
- I can skip the long explanation about how the exact same process happens on
the orbital launch integration Tower Starting from the vent on
the base of the structure then another one near the top of the vertical
risers on the fifth level of the Tower and then one more on the
Starship quick disconnect arm. Now that we understand the basics of preload pre-long Starship let's
move over to the methane side of the tank farm. All the same rules about trickling the
cryogenic methane into each section of the pipe system apply here as well.
Everything that's happening on the liquid oxygen side must also occur on
the methane side - at the same time. Every location where there is a
liquid oxygen Prime up bleed valve, there must also be an equivalent
methane bleed valve in order to relieve the pressure from the vaporized
gas as it builds up inside of the pipes. The major difference is you can't see
this process of priming up each section of pipes occurring, the way that
you can on the liquid oxygen side. Well... you can, but the signs are different. The reason is because SpaceX does everything
possible to recover methane at all stages of the propellant loading process. So instead
of having open atmosphere on the other side of all of those bleed-off valves that
we discussed, the flow of gas is being diverted to the methane recovery system.
No one cares if you purge off massive amounts of oxygen during these testing
events. It's actually cheaper to do so, and I for one kind of appreciate it.
We can never have too much oxygen out here. Methane on the other hand, is a highly
potent greenhouse gas. So purging it off into the atmosphere like this would be
viewed as irresponsible and Incredibly dangerous given the possibility of the two
gases mixing together to form an explosive mixture in the area surrounding
the tank farm and the launch pad. The process of preventing as much
methane as possible from escaping into the atmosphere, is a 24/7 job at Starbase. As long as there is fuel in these seven horizontal
methane tanks, the recovery system is active. This process is extremely complex, and is the
reason that the right side of the tank farm looks so much different from the left side...
minus the obvious fact that instead of using these 40 meter tall vertical storage tanks
as originally planned, they're using these horizontal ones... which I'm sure everyone
at the GSE team at SpaceX secretly hates. So how does it work? Well, let's go through the whole process
just like we did with the liquid oxygen side. First things first, the reason I described this
as a 24 7 operation, is because the methane stored inside of these tanks is going to constantly
boil off over time just like the liquid oxygen. Instead of purging the methane gas off to the
open atmosphere, it's collected in a return pipe and then routed over to this tank that sits
just behind the two methane Kettle reboilers. Just like the hippo-shaped kettles, this is also a heat exchanger tank. It uses
liquid nitrogen to condense gaseous methane back into its liquid state where it can
then be returned to the storage tanks. No matter what time of day it is, you can
see this tank doing its job. Sometimes the flow is near invisible and without
something in the background like these heat shield tiles from ship 24's belly
you probably wouldn't even notice it. As the amount of methane gas being
processed by this heat exchanger increases, both the sound and density of the nitrogen gas
flowing out of the vent stack increases with it. Returning to the fuel loading process, the
next step is identical to the LOX side of the tank farm. First the kettle boilers
are filled with liquid nitrogen so that all of the heat exchanger coils
inside are completely submerged. Next, liquid methane is slowly trickled into the system in order to warm up the pipes
in between the tanks and the pumps. Just as before, until this is
complete the pumps will not be turned on in order to prevent them from
sustaining damage due to cavitation. Between me and you though, I don't
think the anti-cavitation measures are working so well on the methane side of
the tank farm... but we will save that convo for another day because it doesn't have
anything to do with the recovery system. After the pumps and Kettle boilers are primed,
the methane is sent to the fluids bunker, to relieve the gas pressure in the system.
As the pipes are being flooded there is a bleed valve probably just a few feet away
from the one used for the liquid oxygen instead of a grass vent like the LOX side.
This vaporized methane gas is sent back to the same heat exchanger used to handle
the boil off gas from the storage tanks. It's really difficult to tell when
it reaches the bunker like you can with the grass vent but activity on the
heat exchanger vent is a good sign of when the transitions between different
stages of the process are occurring. The rate that methane is trickled into the
rest of the system is limited by how quickly this heat exchanger is able to convert the
resulting vaporized gas back into a liquid. Like I said, it's pretty complex. Finally, with the second stage of prime
up now complete SpaceX can begin sending liquid methane - AKA Raptor juice - up to the
launch Mount. This is where I believe another key difference between the liquid oxygen and
methane side of the tank farm come into play. The liquid oxygen side has nice tall vertical
storage tanks that are nearly full so they can hydrostatically push the fluid all the way to
the height of the booster quick disconnect. As we all know, methane is stored
in the horizontal tanks which are well below the height of the QD so this
means that without a significant amount of back pressure in the tanks or engaging the
methane pumps the fluid levels in these pipes aren't going to get much higher than the
height of where I'm staying at right now. Meanwhile the liquid oxygen fluid level has
already reached the flex hose for the QD. We know this because the bleed valve on the side
of the OLM just closed while we were being blinded by the fog, so now it's time to activate one of
the methane pumps on a very low flow rate setting. You can tell this is happening
because the two vents on the back of the kettle boilers will begin
ejecting twin plumes of nitrogen. It starts off relatively quiet,
sounding a bit like the blowers that are activated at the end
of an automated car wash cycle. Now that the kettle boilers are doing their thing, we can assume that SpaceX is slowly pumping
methane from the base of the olm up to the booster QD on the Orbital Launch Mount as
they begin priming up that last section of cryo-tubing. Returning to the location just
above the LOX bleed vent, we can see another blue valve actuator connected to a pipe that
branches off of the main fuel supply tube. There is no way to know for sure, but let's
just assume this opened up at the same time as the liquid oxygen bleed back when this
stage of pre-loading began. Once activated, the bleed valve diverts the gas through this
pipe over to the other side of the QD where it's connected to another large black pipe which
is officially known as the Methane Bleed Line. The methane bleed line goes down the opposite
side of the launch Mount where it combines with the other black methane bleed line
coming from the integration Tower. From there, it goes back to the tank
farm where it is also processed by the same heat exchanger used
in the two previous steps, As soon as the pumps are running, the rate of boil
off inside of the pipes will begin to increase. Assuming the heat exchanger was already
running at its maximum cooling capacity, the Overflow is diverted to the secondary
vertical methane condenser shown here. After this step is complete, it is time to
get to business both of the Propellant Main Supply pipes are just about as cold as
they are ever going to get the flow of methane passing through the bleed valve has
finally reached the point that - even though the valve is open - the liquid has begun to
make its way to the top of the flex hoses. Now that the system is fully primed,
it's time to close both bleed Valves and open the butterfly valves
on the QD all at the same time. What you're hearing, is without a doubt
my favorite sound in all of Starbase and I'm really grateful for Labpadre's Rover 2
camera for being in this exact location... even though a lot of the times, the
vapor Cloud gets so thick that you can't see anything at all just like it did right
before the pumps turned on a few minutes ago. The amount of crucial details
that I've been able to better understand as a result of this camera
being here is insane as you can tell. The crazy part is, we haven't even started talking
about all the things you can see by viewing these same events Through The Eyes of this camera's
twin brother, but we will get there soon enough Wow, so we finally understand
a good portion of the methane recovery for the super heavy booster right? I did leave out the part related to
detanking but there's a few reasons for that. 1. The likelihood of an explosion occurring
during detank is super low in my opinion. And don't forget that's what this entire
investigation is about, explosions 2. This episode is long enough as it is
and I'm trying to respect y'all's time and 3. The only person I know who actually cares
about detanking other than me is Tim Dodd How long does it take to recycle...because
you're probably.. how... what's that look like because you have to drain the
propellants back into the the tanks? So maybe instead of making an entire episode about it I'll just explain it to him in
person one day since Elon would So if SpaceX is capturing methane in so many
different ways then where is the seven tons of methane coming from and is there something that
can be done to reduce the risk of explosion? Well as far as where the methane is
coming from the answer to this one is pretty straightforward because Elon basically
told us in his tweets after the incident. He just laid it out there, clear as day. The only problem is that these statements
were layered in so much complexity, that I don't think most people - myself
included at the time - fully understood the amount of information that he was revealing. The Tweet I'm referring to started off
as a response to the NASA space flight footage of the 33 engine spin Prime explosion. After retracting a previous statement
- saying it was intentional - Elon responded yeah actually not
good team is assessing damage. In reply to this, a well-known
astronomer from the center of astrophysics by the name of Dr Jonathan
McDowell mentioned the fact that it's still very early in the development
process for the new Raptor 2 engines. To this Elon responded saying that
cryogenic fuel is an added challenge, as it evaporates to create a fuel air explosion
risk in a partially oxygen atmosphere like Earth. That said, we have sensors to
detect this and more later. Next he was asked if it's possible to use a
sparkler system to burn off the leaking fuel, similar to the system used underneath
the space shuttle before ignition. Elon responded "that's one of the things we'll
be doing going forward this particular issue however was specific to the engine spin
start test because Raptor has a complex start sequence. Going forward we won't do a
spin start test with all 33 engines at once." A lot to unpack there. First of all we have not seen
sparklers added underneath the launch Mount. And trust me I've been out
here looking for them just to be sure. They might be a good thing to have but they surely
would not have prevented what we saw on this day. It would however have been seriously awesome to
watch -although it would have been incredibly damaging to the launch structure - which stage
zero Zach would not have been too happy about. Why do I say this? Well if the sparklers were used during
this test then they might as well have done a 33 engine pre-burner test because
that's exactly what would have happened. A solid column of flame shooting
out of the bottom of the engines. How do we know this? Well the reason is because what
you're seeing during this spin Prime test is more than likely
almost entirely liquid methane. There is no leak. Let that sink in for one second. You're seeing SEVEN TONS of liquid
methane evaporating in front of your eyes. This goes completely against
my assumptions from the past, so I'm glad I have the chance to be
the one to correct the record for you. So let's start off with the basics what
is a spin Prime test and why is it needed well unfortunately SpaceX has never released
an official explanation about this process. I assumed that it would be easy enough
to examine the spin Prime procedure for other rocket engines and then see
if we can apply it to the Raptor 2. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. Raptor 2 is vastly different from
every other engine out there. I might be a stage zero pseudo expert
but I don't know enough about rocket engines in order to safely make the
correct one-to-one comparison. Also, this episode was already significantly
delayed as it is, so I didn't really have time to be hopping into various Aerospace
textbooks or spend a ridiculous amount of hours watching YouTube videos about
all the different rocket engine Cycles. I needed to speak with someone who
knows what they're talking about and can help with answering the lingering questions. That's why I took this unannounced trip
to Starbase because I had a feeling that the person I needed to speak with might
still be near the scene of the incident. Also, considering this person probably
doesn't want to be found it was best to keep my arrival secret in order to
prevent them from giving us the slip. oh perfect timing. This is one of our newest CSI
Starbase field agents calling right now. Hopefully he has some good news. Go for StageZeroZack! yeah? Great news! wow okay where'd you find him? pretty impressive... so uh yeah
where are you currently holding him? wait what? why why would you why would
you bring it to my room? Good Lord you have some questionable
decision-making skills. Uh, for now just hold him right where
he is make sure the room is secure. I'm on my way Wow so honestly I was a little hesitant on
bringing agent Riuliani with us because uh you know he has a tendency to do
some pretty crazy stuff sometimes like bring you whoever this is back
to my hotel what a terrible idea oh my God help me who's there whoa
nobody going there about 35 45 minutes Goldenboy! You're back! Wait
and see what I brought you. you're gonna love this one buddy check this out Tim (bleep) Dodd well well well well Tim Dodd
- The Everyday Astronaut. I gotta say Agent Riuliani you
have outdone yourself this time. This is an extremely elusive man. I'm surprised you were able to
catch him without being recognized. Impressive Well to be honest sir he did recognize
me pretty much immediately too Hold up! Are you saying your cover's
blown? Who else knows about this?? I don't think so. What happened was I was
at the Rocky Ranch asking around to see if anyone had seent him. Told em I heard he was in
town and I just wanted to meet one of my idols AND!? Well someone must have tipped him
off because I looked out the window, just in time to catch him fleeing the scene. Luckily with them skinny jeans on, he can't
exactly run away if you know what I mean. It's more like a Brisk jog. so it gave me time to exit calmly, without causing any alarm and then initiate
pursuit when I was clear of the on-lookers. So I don't think anyone else noticed... And! Due to his lack of
ability to take long strides, I was able to catch up to him pretty quickly. He pretty much apprehended
himself honestly [Laughter] self-arresting-skinny-jeans
would you believe that? I think we might actually have to coin that one! Thank you Agent Riuliani,
you have outdone yourself as I said. Now please excuse me while I
have a word with our new ...informant. By the way, uh... I think I'm gonna be busy for
the rest of the evening so I think I'm going to need you to cover for me at Labpadre's
CrowFest. Please do not make a scene. Can you handle this? I'm counting
on you not let me down Judi there's lots of important people there oh you ain't got to worry
about me sir I will not let you down. And... I brought my dancing shoes. Ah Ha Talk soon I know this might seem like an overly aggressive
method that we employed in order to gather the required information. Tut don't worry, I can
guarantee that the everyday astronaut was not harmed during this process and I took special
care to make sure that he was comfortable. "You uhhh, thirsty Tim?? "Yeah, I guess" "Well uh all I got is water in
the solid form so drink up!" "Seriously, you brought me ice?" From my experience it's usually a
good idea to start off with some basic questions in order to test out
the witness's willingness to cooperate. "I have some questions that I want to ask you here today related to Raptor engines and
specifically the cooling process." As expected Tim immediately attempted a desperate tactic that a lot of first time
informants usually resort to. "I got to tell you straight up top,
I..[nervous stutter] I don't know hardly anything I'm just a YouTube
guy. You know I don't know this..." But through some persistence, we
were able to get a lot of important information out of him. This allowed
me to fill in some missing pieces of the evidence needed in order to
come to the following conclusions. The first important detail that we need to
understand, is that the engine pre-chill sequence for the Raptor 2 is only for
the oxygen side of the engine that's a little counter-intuitive right?
Especially considering that there is significantly more surface area to cool
on the methane side given that it has to travel through the engine Bells before
it reaches the fuel-rich pre-burner. The reason I say this is because it should
be very similar to the regenerative cooling system used on a lot of Rocket engines. I figured
the best one to compare it to would be the RS25 engine used on the space shuttle and SLS this is
one of the first things I needed Tim to explain "What can you tell me about the cooling
method used on the rs25 engine?" "Well the, RS25 is regeneratively cooled. So they
actually do run cryogenic propellant through the walls of the rocket engine you'll actually notice
it gets really Frosty like there's literally condensation and ice buildup on the outside of the
engine. Yet on the inside of the engine you know it's scorching hot but um that's how they keep the
the walls and the combustion chamber for melting." "So is this a liquid or a gas in here?" "So inside the walls there there might
actually be a phase change at some point from liquid because it starts off liquid by the
time it reaches the main combustion chamber it's often gas but uh there there may or may not be
a phase change as it goes through the walls." After this, Tim proceeded to tell me that
he believes this is the same process on the Raptor 2 Engine with the liquid methane flowing
through the engine bell. At this point I started to realize that he was trying to give me
the run around so I had to press harder. "I mean what's what's your goal in
the Raptor 2 engine.. are you are you sending gas to the pre-burner
or are you sending it as a liquid" "I'm pretty sure it shows it in
the pre-brainer still as a liquid" "you think so?" "...I think so" "Then whyyy isn't the engine Frosty Tim?" "well it could [stutters] I actually have
never really considered that to be honest I [more stutters] I it could just be like the
thickness of the walls it could be the ambient conditions I don't know what exactly I [stutter
fest] I don't I don't know how it could be uh gas before it reaches the walls because it goes
straight from the uhh huh through the front oh I have to think about this. With full flow..." At this moment, I knew I had
him backed into a corner. Frosty engine Bells - whether it's on a
sea level variant or the larger vacuum optimized version - is something we
have never seen on a Raptor 2 engine. I believe that by the time the methane
has traveled through the engine Bell and reaches the pre-burner, it needs to already
be fully transitioned over to the gas phase. So if the methane side of the engine does not need to be pre-chilled by extension that
means that all of the internal pipe work containing methane should be empty
until the spin-up process is initiated. On the other hand, as Tim
Dodd stated in his video, it's extremely important to pre-chill the
oxidizer turbo pump due to the incredibly high temperatures that it will experience
in comparison to the methane turbo pump. So this is why we see the liquid
oxygen side fully primed up and venting off excess oxygen gas just like
the bleed valves that we discussed earlier. The goal here is to keep cooling the
engine until the point where the liquid oxygen begins pouring out of the Raptor
chill vents - which started off as a gas. Once the desired temperature is reached, it's
time to quickly Prime up the methane side of the engine by opening the main fuel valve and then
using helium to spin up the methane turbo pump. This sends methane through the engine bells and back to the pre-burner and then
out of the main combustion chamber. Because this is just a spin Prime and not a static
fire there is no ignition. So all the methane must immediately be purged out of the engine
using nitrogen once the prime up is complete. Looking at a successful 33 engine spin
Prime that didn't end in disaster, you can see what I'm talking
about like I said there is a lot of surface area on the methane side
of the engine that has to be purged out. During this purge, it only makes sense that
an equal or greater volume of nitrogen will need to be forced through the engine, in
order to push out the residual methane. When this happens, it will actually appear
as if there is a Second Spin Prime occurring. Shortly after the end of the second surge of
gas you can see the cloud of methane begin to quickly dissipate, as nitrogen has now
made its way to the main combustion chamber and begins to displace the flammable
gases from underneath the launch Mount. This is what Elon meant by cryogenic
Fuel evaporating and mixing with the air. You can see the evaporation
occurring even more clearly when you look at it from Labpadre's thermal
camera - also known as Predator 2.0 cam. Notice how quickly it clears away as the
nitrogen begins forcing it out of the area. When you look at the top of the screen
you can see the plume pass in front of the tank farm as the thermal energy in the
methane cloud has already increased enough for it to begin showing up warmer
than the surrounding ambient air. Thermal cameras are often used in the
oil and gas industry to find the source of natural gas leaks. My experience as a
field engineer in the petroleum industry is probably the only reason I noticed this
and was able to draw a conclusion from it. I say this because I wasn't watching this view in order to prove that SpaceX was dumping
seven tons of methane into the air, the reason I watch Predator cam during
testing events is because this is how I typically identify how many engines are about to
be tested before I send out tweets like this one Anyways there are a few more important places that
SpaceX has to worry about the buildup of flammable gases. The first is inside of the launch Mount
especially since the clamps and Raptor QD's are deployed during this time so there's plenty of
open holes for that methane to enter the table. But, we will cover that in part two
of this deep dive investigation. An even more important area to be concerned
about perhaps is the inside of the engine skirt of the booster. An explosion in here
- as a result of a buildup of methane and oxygen gas - could put the entire vehicle
at risk and by extension could also put the entire launch pad and surrounding
500 meters or so at risk as well. So to prevent explosions inside of the skirt,
SpaceX has nitrogen Purge vents inside of each engine compartment - which you may remember me
mentioning on the last Deep dive investigation. The outer 20 engines receive their
nitrogen directly through the 20 Raptor QD ports. The 13 engines in the
center need to get their nitrogen source from another location and no they
can't just share with the outer 20. So instead, they are likely
pulling from the booster QD. If you watched the most recent CSI Starbase
episode about the FIREX and detonation suppression system on the orbital launch Mount
then you probably remember when I mentioned that there would be times that SpaceX needs to run
every single nitrogen Purge system on the OLM, at the same time. During spin Prime tests
is one of those times that I can think of. Not only to purge away all of the methane
in the engine skirt, but also to remove the oxygen from the space beneath the orbital
launch Mount before the spin Prime even occurs. This would significantly reduce the
energy released if the gaseous methane somehow manages to find an ignition source. We actually got our first example of this during the booster 7 multi-engine spin
Prime test from November 11th. This side-by-side comparison from
NASASpaceFlight footage shows how quickly the water infused nitrogen jet disperses
the methane cloud from under the table. In the video on the right with the Firex
system engaged you can see that the nitrogen and water combination is actually
accelerating the rate of evaporation and forcing the methane out from underneath
the launch Mount all at the same time. Keep in mind that this is a
test of somewhere between 10 to 20 of the outer Raptor boost engines. on the left we are seeing a 33 engine test so
there is more methane that has to be dispersed, however I think the effect
that this system is having on the cloud is pretty noticeable either way. Removing the oxygen is critical because as
Elon stated - when the fuel mixes with ambient air there is an inherent risk of spontaneous
combustion or a high energy supersonic detonation. This risk is Amplified when the
oxygen content in the air is even higher than it normally would be,
which was the case during this event. When we review the footage from the explosion one
more time, you can see that before the spin Prime even begins, there's already a huge cloud
of gaseous oxygen underneath the the table. The moment the spin Prime is initiated,
the gaseous oxygen Cloud disappears as it's instantly combined into a perfect mixture of
methane and oxygen also known as a MOX sandwich. This MOX cloud is significantly
larger than the one we talked about that occurs at the moment of
ignition of the Raptor 2 engines. As you can tell, this was simply unacceptable
to be allowed to continue so SpaceX was going to have to do something to remove the initial
vaporized oxygen cloud from the equation. So what solution did SpaceX Engineers
come up with in order to enable them to safely continue forward with testing
booster 7 on the orbital launch Mount? Well in my opinion this is where
things start to get interesting As a reminder, the booster 7 explosion occurred
on July 11th of 2022. Three days later on July 14th booster 7 was lifted off the launch Mount
and sent back to the build site for repairs. While in the mega Bay booster 7 had all 13
of its Center engines removed. Initially we weren't exactly sure what changes were made
to these engines after they were swapped out but thanks to recent developments
we now have a better understanding of the alterations that were made to these
Raptor 2s. We will cover this more later. Meanwhile, back at the launch site, the first
of the post-explosion upgrades began to appear. Although this first upgrade was in
the works before the detonation event, its arrival was too incredibly
well timed not to mention it here. What I'm referring to is one
of SpaceX's favorite new toys, the orbital launch Mount elevated work
platform. I say this was well timed because without this Aerial Work platform
many of the operations that we will touch on in the next few minutes would have
taken significantly longer to complete. This is the only upgrade that we were able
to notice until B7 made its way back to the launch site. When it finally returned,
the homecoming was a bit of a sad one after the Chopsticks got damaged right as
B7 was moving into position for the lift. The next day on August 6th, it was lifted
back onto the OLM using SpaceX's LR11000 super-crane as you can see in this
footage from Cosmic Perspective. The center 13 engines had still not been
reinstalled yet at this point. So as SpaceX Was preparing for the next round
of testing, I was wondering why booster 7 would be back on the OLM if the changes to
the center engines were still not completed. But learning from past experiences, I had a
feeling that this wouldn't be a simple cryo test just to make sure that booster 7 was still
functioning properly after the detonation event. On Monday August 8th, SpaceX started a week
of heavy testing for Booster 7 and Ship 24. this was the first time that we had ever seen simultaneous tests on the orbital
launch Mount and suborbital pads. As a viewer this caused a lot of confusion
at first when it seemed booster 7 would be the one to get things kicked off once
the orbital tank farm began to spin up. But, before the expected fuel loading process
could commence, the suborbital tank farm also came to life and SpaceX quickly began loading
liquid oxygen and methane onto ship 24 for a six engine spin Prime test note that during
these tests the Raptor chill exhaust venting is being blown upwards by an invisible jet
of nitrogen coming from the test stand. This prevents a potential MOX bomb from
forming underneath the test stand when nearly 1.3 tons of methane is ejected from the
vehicle during this six engine spin Prime test. This is an estimate based on the assumption
that the equivalent process of a 33 engine booster produces seven tons as we learned earlier. Shortly after this concluded SpaceX began
preparing for another spin Prime test, except this time on B7. Unfortunately I didn't
get to see the spin Prime test because I got distracted by something completely unexpected the
moment SpaceX began loading fuel onto the booster. Wait what what is that is that
their new Raptor chill pipe? Wow how did I miss this? I didn't even see
it installed ...where's it coming from?? This immediately kicked off a huge investigation
on the CSI Starbase Discord server. We needed to get some detailed images from the opposite side
of the OLM in order to figure this one out. But of course, the road was closed again
the next morning so there was no way for Starship gazer or Mauricio from RGV
aerial photography to get out to the launch complex and grab us some close-up
images from this side of the launch Mount. I'm not complaining though, because this
was the day that Starship fans around the world had been waiting on for more than a year. It was finally time for the first ever
static fire test on the orbital Launch Mount. I have to admit though, the single engine
static fire test was amazing and all, but I was far more focused on understanding what
was going on with this new Raptor chill vent. Basically instead of depositing the liquid oxygen
from the engine chill vent directly underneath the vehicle, it was being redirected out to
the side of the launch Mount. This actually seemed very familiar to me for some reason, but
at the time I couldn't figure out why that was. In the last OLM Deep dive investigation
we identified the location of the Raptor chill vents on booster 7. Connecting
to this vent in order to divert it to a new location must be pretty
tricky. So how are they doing it? Well first we need to figure out whether or
not this is a test of a single Raptor or if this is multiple engines venting into the same
pipe. With how heavy the flow was coming out of the pipe, it's possible that this could be
multiple engines connected to this one vent. I quickly realized that this was
not the case when the next morning they began adding even more of these
pipes onto the underside of the table. This is when it finally dawned on me how
crazy this was potentially about to get. On the morning of August 8th I tweeted
out that the next booster test we see on the OLM was going to look
significantly different from anything we have ever seen before...
which instantly confused some people. Even Mauricio from RGV Aerial
Photography didn't know what I was referring to at the time and I
talked to him multiple times a week. So, I gave out a little hint that there would
be some major changes to the appearance of the Raptor Chill process. If there was one of these
vents for each of the outer 20 Raptor engines, it could end up looking like the eye of a
hurricane during the Raptor till down sequence. But to my dismay, on August 11th the day
of the next static fire test, I was caught off guard when the Raptor chill vent was no
longer visible on the front side of the OLM. This was super awkward and I knew folks were about to start calling me out on Twitter
for being wrong with my prediction. Luckily this test actually did end
up being something that we had never seen before because SpaceX performed a long
duration static fire test of a single engine. So it kind of worked out. The next day Mauricio was finally able
to get out to the launch complex. This was the first time we had someone on site
since the beginning of all this craziness. These are the first images that we received
showing the new pipes that were added onto the table with the booster sitting on top
of the launch mount. It was difficult to see underneath to determine how these
were being connected to the engines. We were extremely lucky that Mauricio was
able to catch this Glimpse in between two of the engine Bells. When I saw this picture
for the first time I was extremely confused. What is going on here? How are these supposed
to connect to the engines...are they Bluetooth? looking closely I noticed some green painted
lines on the Inside Edge of the table skirt that hadn't been there before which suggested that
there may be even more of these still to come. Because they seem to be mounted in pairs I
assumed that there may actually be two for each of the outer 20 engines so that would
mean there are 40 of these pipes in total. The reason I figured there would be
two for each engine is because there are four drain ports on each Raptor.
Based on this diagram of the Raptor engine it makes sense that there are two LOX
drains and two CH4 (methane) drains. Of course this is a Raptor V1 we are seeing here but
these drain ports still exist on Raptor V2. Also the end of the pipes looked
very similar to the fittings found on the drain ports which is where
this pipe should be attached to. It does look a little larger than the drain
pipes but it's hard to tell without seeing them next to each other five days later on August
16th there was another important addition made. We noticed that SpaceX Engineers had added a
new circular manifold around the table. That's when it became clear that they were planning
to collect it and send it somewhere else. This makes a lot more sense than the alternative
which is dumping it over the side of the table where it most likely would still find a way to mix
with the methane Cloud during the spin Prime test. Some of you might be thinking... well wouldn't
this be a problem on the suborbital pad as well? The answer is yes. As you can see, the existing system is
clearly not doing enough to redirect the flow of liquid oxygen from making its
way to the underside of the test stand. Luckily SpaceX is in the process of upgrading this
to a more powerful system called the ultra Purge. Two days after the manifold was
lifted into place we got some close-up images of it allowing us to
see the port where each of the pipes would later be connected to after they
were bent into the correct positions. Looking at the right side of the manifold you
can see that it dips down and goes underneath the BQD (Booster Quick Disconnect) shield.
Some of the pipes were already connected on this side after the pipe continues
past the gigantic QD hood is connected to a Tee fitting which completes the
circular manifold around the table. As you can tell, once both ends of
the manifold join together at the tee, the pipe diameter is increased.
This should reduce any possible flow restrictions that can occur when
the split flow combines into one. This larger pipe goes down the legs and
into the doghouse at the base. From there, it comes out of the little hole they drilled
into the steel box and then turns down into the ground. It re-emerges inside of this concrete
tube, which is either used to protect everything on the outside from the internal explosions, or
protect what's inside from external explosions. But if they're worried about that, then every pipe on the launch Mount would
be covered so I don't think that's the case. This is an alternative solution to
bearing a bunch of Precast culverts like these ones into the ground
then covering them up with concrete. By the way a little off topic but
these just randomly showed up to the suborbital farm a few weeks ago
which is incredibly odd. Definitely be on the lookout over the coming weeks
to see if these are put to use soon. Anyways since these culverts weren't needed,
it saved a lot of time as they quickly ran this pipe over to the new u-shaped berm
which had just been added the week before. A few weeks later, this is what the finished
product looked like. As you can tell, the sloped walls of the bowl
are about six to eight feet high which makes this a pretty
decently sized collection Basin. Thanks to Mauricio, we can see what this
looks like in action during all stages of the Raptor chill process. The moment liquid
oxygen loading begins on the booster gaseous oxygen from the Raptor chill pipes will start
venting from the outlet at the collection Basin. From this aerial perspective it's easier to
identify the moment that the flow transitions over to the liquid phase as a LOX pool
begins to form inside of the pit. T he Raptor chill remains active for the entire
LOX loading process, which directly affects what you will see inside of this pit. The
more liquid oxygen loaded onto the booster, the longer the Raptor chill sequence will be. That
means this pit will continue to fill even longer. When you increase the amount of engines being
tested, the rate of liquid flow into this pit will increase as well. The next phase in
this process happens when the liquid oxygen pumps shut down and the butterfly valve on the
booster QD for the main fill ports is closed. After this, you will notice the bleed
valve on the side of the OLM open back up and begin draining liquid oxygen
from the tri-blade vent. This is an important moment that I don't think
a lot of people fully understand. What you're seeing here is the liquid oxygen
flex-hose being drained of its contents. This is most likely a safety precaution in case something
were to go wrong with the booster QD connection. It also reduces the weight of the flex hoses,
which is probably critical for making sure that the quick disconnect and retraction
mechanism for the BQD functions properly. These massive hoses have to move with the hood
mechanism as it opens and closes so if they remain filled it would dramatically increase
the stress on the hydraulic system foreign Anyways once the flex hoses are empty and the bleed valve is shut you can consider
the fuel loading process complete. LOX bath anyone??? So now we pretty much understand
everything except how the outer 20 engines connect to this pipe on the
collection manifold. Up to this point, I had my assumption of how this
worked, but I needed to be sure. When booster 7 returned to the launch
complex after having all 13 of its Center engines reinstalled on August
23rd I realized that this might be my only chance to catch SpaceX in the
process of hooking all this stuff up. As soon as it was lifted onto the
launch Mount, the Stakeout was underway. Sometime around two in the morning the
following day, I found what I was looking for. Two workers up on a man basket lifting what
I assumed was 40 blue flex hoses onto the work platform. If you get anything out of
this episode, remember this... If you're going to be the type of person who likes
to quickly jump to conclusions like me, make sure you're also equally as quick
to identify signs and you got it wrong. When I noticed the worker in the back
lifting up a handful of red hoses, an alarm was immediately triggered in my brain. "wait what why are those ones a different color is it possible that half of these drains
are oxygen and the other half are methane that would be awkward combining them into a mixed
flow inside of the collection manifold....?" But no, it turns out that
this was something different. The red hoses were actually longer
than the blue ones and they were significantly less of them since he
was able to lift all of them at once. Shortly after this, I was watching as the workers
began to connect the hoses to each of the outer 20 engines. I noticed that almost all the hoses
I was seeing being passed around were blue. Not a single red one. I also noticed that there was still one
lonely pipe in the middle of the skirt. I was expecting another one to have been
installed next to it by now, so this would give us three sets of two collection pipes in
between each of the six legs for a total of 36.. wait.... and that's when it clicked "oh nahhh there's 33 of them not 40. wow" The reason there are five on this side and
six on the other one directly across from it is because if you have five pipes between
each set of legs, that gives you 30 in total which means the sides with six pipes
must be where the three Center engines are routed to. The red hoses must be longer
in order to reach the center 13 engines. Now that I finally understood how the engines
were being connected to the collection manifold it makes a lot more sense why the curved sections of
engine shielding for booster 7 were never replaced leaving the shield off makes it easier
to reach the drain which has likely been relocated since it won't be needed to point
straight down towards the ground anymore. I believe that in order to reach the center 13 engines the hoses for those engines must
also come in through the same openings. If not they would have to be ran in between
the engine bells and that sounds like a terrible idea considering they will have
to survive static fire testing of course this also explains why the robustness upgrades
everyone was expecting still did not include the curved shielding which has been missing
ever since booster 7 decided to Ejecto-Seato. Seriously though, these hoses
for the center 13 engines... wow I can't even imagine trying to Route
those through all of that pipe work. But two days later, I realized it
might actually be necessary to do just that and here's why? On August 25th I
got my first close-up of the Raptor chill pipes in action I missed the first triple spin
Prime test because.... uh yeah I was at work. I could have caught the second one but I missed
that one as well because after I saw this I realized that I had some work to do. While most
people watching the live stream, were checking out the rain falling from the wet engine Bells
I was staring at these three pipes right here. As you can see, they look like they
are white instead of shiny and silver. The reason is because they're
covered in Frost because there is liquid oxygen still boiling
off inside of the Raptor engines. This is amazing just by looking at these pipes
you can count how many engines are about to be involved in the spin prime or static fire test.
If only I knew which engines they connected to, maybe I could predict which
ones were about to be tested. This could come in handy for later. So I
got to work trying to figure out exactly how these were laid out starting with
figuring out which sides had six pipes instead of five so I could determine
where the center engines were located. In order to do this, we need
a common reference point. The best one to use is this picture from Elon, which is deceptively hard to figure
out which way it's facing. So, I'll help you out this is basically looking in
the direction if you were facing the booster QD from the same angle that Cosmic perspective
had during the seven engine static fire test. So now that we know which direction
this is pointing in ,let's run through this quickly. Looking under the skirt at
the far side, we can see four pipes but that's not one of the options though
so we have to move to the back side. Now that we're here we can count the pipe fittings
that have been welded onto the manifold in this section on the far right we can see a single
Inlet to the right of the second double grouping. As a quick observation, before we
continue the fittings for the outer 20 engines should be evenly spaced around
the manifold anytime we see two pipes next to each other like this it means that one
of them is going to the center ring of 10. This is because it has to go up through
the closest open engine Shield cover in order to get there. At the next section, we
have six pipes but I labeled this as five because you will see that one of them
actually goes up inside of the table. If I had to guess this is used for monitoring
internal pressure or possibly something else but we still are not that part of the
investigation yet. Next a real group of six engines and another one right next to it
followed by five in between the two legs that Rover 2 camera is usually pointing towards
and then we can assume the last one is six. Once I determined where the groups
of five and six were located, it was time to figure out how the
engines were being grouped together. This was probably the most difficult part
to figure out but after a late night with CSI special agent Jax, we were able to come
up with an engine grouping that made sense. The next part was going to be key because I
needed to figure out how to properly route the pipes as accurately as possible if I wanted to
be able to predict which ones were being tested. About halfway through, I got really
frustrated with how complex this was. There has to be a way of simplifying all
this. I feel like the center 13 engines should be routed through the booster QD
or something. I mean, I know that adds a little bit of pipe work in order to create
a manifold for these 13 engines but maybe it could be offset by... I don't know using the
booster QD to start the center 13 engines? If the launch Mount was responsible for starting
all 33 engines instead of just the outer 20, then the booster would only need enough
COPV's for Boost back and the landing burn. Depending on how many engines are
used during the Boost back burn phase, the total amount of COPV's needed
on the booster could be cut in half. I usually keep thoughts like this
to myself but I decided to tweet it out as a question to Elon then I threw my
phone to the side and went back to work. The next morning Elon surprisingly responded
to my tweet with the following statement "Agreed we recently made
this change and many others" wow that's pretty groundbreaking but the reason
I was surprised because he sent it out in a tweet "bro I'm right over here on the on the highway" I mean I appreciated it but he could
have just walked over and told me and what's with the second part of this tweet? "An intense effort is underway to
achieve robust engine containment in case of RUD (Rapid unscheduled disassembly) to
protect booster other engines and launch ring" Well that didn't really have
anything to do with my question.. "Wait is this some kind of hint??
oh I like these kind of games!" I had to sit on that one for a while because
I thought he was trying to distract me from this investigation. So I finally finished
my diagram and this is what it looks like. Pretty neat right? I call it the super heavy
spaghetti special. It's a special because it's only here for a limited time because the
booster cannot launch like this. There is no way, but before we go and worry about
what the permanent solution will need to look like let's go have some fun
with this and enjoy it while it lasts. It's time to put everything we have learned
since the start of this investigation to the test starting with this footage of the booster
7 single engine static fire test on August 31st. Playing this video at high speed for effect
if you were to look at the manifold on the left side of the leg you can see what
occurs as soon as the Raptor chill begins. The entire manifold begins to frost over.
Note that it starts from just to the left of the Tee and it then quickly
descends down the leg of the OLM. Simultaneously it starts to travel in the
direction to the right of the Tee Union and here you can quickly see that all of
a sudden it starts to be difficult to see which direction is traveling because the
whole pipe frosts over at the same time. If we zoom in, you can see the reason
why it appears this way. The Raptor chill pipe in the very middle of
the screen is filling with liquid oxygen at the same time as the first
engine on the left side of the Tee. We won't be able to pinpoint that engine from
this angle, but we can identify engine number two. Based on the fact that we are
looking at it from this angle, I believe that we should be
seeing this engine right here. When we look at the static fire test it seems
to line up pretty well but it's hard to know for sure without some additional help and of course
in this case one of the only people who's going to be able to tell us for sure which engines
is actually being fired is Ryan Hansen Space. So with his help I wanted to test my
theory during the next major testing event. Thanks to Ryan we were able to
get a diagram of which engines were tested so we could go back and see
how well they lined up with my groupings. We only had one good angle of this test where it
zoomed in enough to see the frosted pipes so we can for sure see one right here and then another
one on the other side this should correspond with these two engines highlighted here. Which
according to Ryan's diagram, lines up perfectly, There is another one over to the
right side which is also frosted and I believe this matches up with
the Raptor boost engine right here. This diagram might not be perfect but the
point is now you at least know what to look for when watching these tests it gets
even easier if you're using lab Padres Predator camera which is my favorite
camera for watching static fire tests. This is what it looks like when a three engine
static fire is about to happen. You can tell it's a low number of engines because the manifold is
patchy and only parts of it are blue. When you do see the blue patches of ultra cold pipe that means
there is an engine nearby in chill down mode. The engine group directly in front of us
will not be tested at all in this example. On the flip side this is what it looks like
when SpaceX is preparing to do a 33 engine test. You can see that the collection manifold
is glowing blue and there are black lines coming down from where each of the
individual collection pipes are. From this distance, some of the
pipes are too close together to distinguish apart from each other so
they appear as a single black line. There are some obvious limitations
with trying to spot the Frosted chill lines if we don't have a view of
the back side of the launch Mount then we can really only see about half
the Raptor chill lines attached. So to actually identify every engine
position on the table would require some coordination from every live stream camera
that has a clear view of the launch mount they would all need to be zoomed
in looking for it at the same time Anyways as cool as this is what we're
looking at is not really a good thing. I think we can all agree that this is a
temporary solution and SpaceX cannot launch like this with 33 manual disconnects
attached inside the engine skirt. So what are they going to do? We haven't seen them working on any
other permanent Solutions right? Well what if I told you that SpaceX might
already have a solution for this but for some reason they're just not using it? Between me
and you I think they might even be afraid of it... I gotta say that quietly because I'm
pretty sure that this Tower can hear me. This is the only system on the orbital launch
Mount that I have never once seen in action. I want to warn all of you that what I'm about
to tell you is highly speculative in nature. There is a strong possibility that
some of the information you're about to hear could be incorrect. As you
can tell, the orbital launch Mount is an extremely complicated machine so take
everything I say with a huge pinch of salt. Well unfortunately, we're gonna have to wait
until part two of this deep dive investigation to answer these questions. This might have
seemed like all the information you could possibly need but trust me we have a lot more to
cover and you're not going to want to miss this. So make sure to subscribe
the channel if you haven't already and also hit the alert icon
so you don't miss the next premiere. Hopefully those of you who are returning
viewers can tell that I really went out of my way to create a different experience for you
all this time around I know a lot of folks like this type of format of actually being on site
at Starbase far more than the green screen. If you would like to see more of these types
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to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported this channel so far hopefully I
didn't miss any of your names in the credits, if so don't hesitate to reach out
to me on patreon and let me know. Last but not least I want to give another
massive shout out to Marcus House, StarshipGazer and Tim Dodd for their
direct contributions to this episode and also to the photographers and 3D forensics
agents whose footage was used here today. Without them none of this would be possible,.
If you would like to support any of these artists you can find the links to their
various Platforms in the descriptions. But I want to let you all know that
by supporting CSI Starbase you are also supporting these photographers and 3D
artists the reason I say that is because we have committed to reinvesting two-thirds of our
patreon income back into these content creators. As I said, we truly need them in order
to continue doing what we do here. So Thank you all again for watching part one
of this deep dive investigation don't forget to tune in to the Starbase weekly
live stream hosted by RGV aerial photography every Saturday at noon Central Time. I don't always have time to cover
everything during these episodes so there's a ton of stuff that you
will only hear on those live streams another thing you can only get from RGV Aerial,
is this awesome T-shirt with the Starship TPS tiles on it if you want one of these for
yourself or for someone special in your life then check out the RGV merch store
which I have Linked In the description. With that it looks like my time is up I'll
see you all on part two of this investigation. Until then StageZeroZack signing off [Music]
