It’s official! Starship flight plan revealed! They want to land the Ship?
Surprising Flight 3 issues revealed! Why did the Booster really fail? Rocket Lab launches another mission for NASA. VAST shows off the first prototype
of its commercial space station! My name is Felix. Welcome to What About It!? Let’s dive right in! Starship Updates We’re getting close! As always with Starship
flights, SpaceX is revealing more details about the next launch every day!
Flight four seemed underwhelming at first, but we have a massive plot
twist—possibly the biggest one yet. Want to know more? Follow me!
We’re just a little over a week away from another launch of Starship! My travel
accommodations are made! It’s happening! Here at Starbase, you can definitely
feel and see the excitement! This time, the biggest rocket in the world
will have to prove that maneuvers required for full reusability are indeed possible
and not just in a high-altitude flight test. Before it does so, however, and before I
show you what exactly will be different, there are still some tasks left to complete…
Last week, we witnessed what initially appeared to be a full Wet Dress Rehearsal -
a launch simulation without Raptor ignition. Following that test - the upper stage,
Ship 29, was destacked in preparation for a rollback that ultimately… didn’t happen.
Perhaps SpaceX received some good news from the FAA, or they concluded that
shuffling all the prototypes at the Build Site would take too much time.
Either way, workers began stripping some of the prototype's tiles right at the Launch Site.
Seeing them replace the tiles just days before the scheduled liftoff shows how much SpaceX wants this
to be the first Ship to make it through reentry. Doing whatever is possible
before the launch and using every option available will increase its odds.
Back in the days of the Space Shuttle, replacing a single tile was a process that could take up to
a month. The ability to swap them in mere minutes on Starship is a real game-changer! Now they
only need to stay where they are during lift-off. After a few days of work, on May 26th, Ship 29
was once again positioned between the arms of Mechazilla, and later, it was re-stacked.
Since the flight termination charges and the S29 decals weren’t installed, this likely
wasn’t the last time this Starship was stacked. You may remember that in the last episode,
we put on our tin foil hats to speculate that perhaps the seemingly successful Wet Dress
Rehearsal wasn’t so successful after all… We had two pieces of evidence
suggesting this might be the case. First, pictures shared by SpaceX
showed a Booster that was almost fully loaded but still missing a single ring
of propellant. Hard to spot, but important. Secondly, Cameron County posted
another non-flight road closure, which would perfectly accommodate a second WDR.
With the prototype re-stacked without receiving the final touches required for launch, we’re now
fairly convinced that we’ll see another WDR or at least a smaller tanking test.
This test is likely to occur on May 28th between 5 AM and 5 PM local time.
Since this is the day this video was released, take a look at our 24/7 Starbase livestream. A
link is in the description! You might just see a frosty Starship after finishing this episode!
Once that test is completed and the teams determine it was successful, Ship
29 will be de-stacked once more to receive the flight termination charges.
Initially, there was a lot of evidence suggesting the launch would happen between June
1st and 3rd, but since then, SpaceX has revealed the official No Earlier Than or NET estimate.
The fourth Starship won’t launch until June 5th… pending regulatory approval.
With the official date revealed, Elon Musk’s company went into full rapid-fire mode
regarding information about this and the previous flight! Some of what I’m going to tell you now is
indeed very surprising! If this works… we’re in for an even crazier show than last time! Again!
Let’s start with the plan for the next launch, which turns out to be quite exciting.
Comparing the mission profile with flight three, changes can be seen all over the place
even before Starship leaves the ground. With the experience gained from the
previous launch, SpaceX has been able to fine-tune the Starship fueling process.
As such, tanking will begin even later into the countdown than previously.
We explained the reasons why in the last episode. Take a look after finishing
this one! It’ll be linked in the end card! Methane will now flow into the Ship’s tank
two minutes later, and liquid oxygen will start pouring six minutes later.
For the Booster, the timings are one and five minutes later, respectively.
Interestingly, according to the provided timeline, in both cases, fuel will
flow first, not the oxidizer, which is different from what we saw during flight three.
Speeding up the propellant load by a few minutes might not seem like a big deal - but as discussed
in the last episode - this can save thousands of dollars in fuel that doesn’t need to be vented.
Not to mention, it helps prevent the formation of potential ice crystals… inside the ship!
As the prototype is being filled with fuel, the Raptor chill procedure will begin exactly
at the same time as it did during flight three. This is a crucial part of pre-flight preparation,
where a small amount of liquid oxygen flows through the engines, gradually cooling them down.
This prevents the formation of gas bubbles and reduces the risk of parts cracking due
to thermal shock. The next change to this timeline will very likely happen with the
introduction of the next Raptor engine version. Not much will happen during the next few minutes
until about three minutes before launch when the propellant reaches its maximum level.
The rest of the pre-flight events follow the same pattern seen in previous missions.
Hopefully, during mission four, SpaceX will delay the pad avoidance maneuver.
You see, Starship lifts off at a slight angle to avoid crashing into the
launch tower. This tilt is on purpose! However, this seems to cause several problems
after launch, including damage to the launch mount and the chopsticks. The engines fire at an
angle and not clean through the middle of the OLM. Delaying this maneuver by two or three
seconds could significantly reduce the need for refurbishment at the launch site.
That is unless it causes the rocket to crash into the tower… which we’re not
hoping for even though it would look epic. Nope… we’re not. Maybe a little.
Once Starship clears the tower, it will encounter Max-Q, the point where the rocket
experiences the maximum of mechanical stress. Interestingly, this will occur a full ten
seconds later than during mission three. While this initially suggests lower thrust,
the Most Engines Cut-Off event will happen at almost the same time as before.
This could imply one of two things. The upper stage will separate at a lower altitude.
Or… The Super Heavy thrust profile has
changed, starting at a lower thrust and then increasing significantly after Max-Q.
I do think that this one is more likely. Following MECO, we’ll see hot staging
and the boost back burn startup. Now, the boost-back maneuver involves the Super
Heavy flipping around and firing its engines to reach the landing spot—a technique first achieved
with Falcon 9 and now being adapted for Starship. If the burn goes as planned, it will bring
the Super Heavy to just 30 kilometers or 19 miles away from Starbase.
Just two seconds after the boost back is complete, we’ll witness an
entirely new event - hot-stage jettison. This means they’ll drop the ring that
connected the Booster with the upper stage, and we’ll talk about the reason
for this move later in this video! A few minutes later, the
booster will enter the final phase of its flight, which is the landing burn.
For this mission, it will occur earlier to allow SpaceX more time to shave off all that velocity.
The Super Heavy also won’t be landing on a real tower yet - instead, it
will perform a soft landing in the ocean, referred to as a virtual tower.
I wouldn't be surprised if, during this time, we will see some activity back at the launch site.
According to Elon Musk, SpaceX aims to catch the Booster as early as flight five, so it would
be logical to test Mechazilla just minutes after liftoff, as this hasn’t been done before.
In an ideal scenario, SpaceX could feed data from the Booster directly into Mechazilla
to see if it could handle such a landing. Fully virtual test on both the booster and
the real tower. Why not do both? What do you think? Will we see some chopsticks action during
flight four? Place your bets in the comments! Meanwhile, in the air, Ship 29 will continue its
ascent until eight minutes and 23 seconds, which happens to place the engine shutdown 13 seconds
earlier than during Flight 3. Slightly less. It will then enter the coast phase,
during which we won’t see much action but likely again extremely stunning live
footage of the next Starship in Space! SpaceX will likely use this time
to test the upgraded attitude control thrusters of the prototype.
However, there won’t be any major tests like the propellant transfer demo, the payload bay
test, or the Raptor engine relight. The propellant demo was successful and needed to be done just
once for NASA, and the engine relight and the payload bay door test are skipped for now.
This phase will last almost 40 minutes, after which the prototype will
begin atmospheric reentry. Yeah! This is where Ship 28 met its end during
flight three, becoming the first Starship to experience the scorching heat of reentry plasma!
Elon Musk has previously stated that the goal of this flight is to survive peak reentry heat,
and now we understand why this is so important. Assuming the Ship survives and slows down
to subsonic speeds, it will then perform a landing flip followed by the landing burn!
Yep, you heard me right! This maneuver, which we have seen in high-altitude flights before,
will now be attempted after returning from space, not just after going up 10 kilometers or 6 miles!
It's surprising to see SpaceX attempt this maneuver so early, but there
is a possible explanation. Currently, the FAA is determining whether
SpaceX can receive a modified launch license without needing to submit
a full mishap investigation report. During Flight 3, they weren’t even planning
a landing burn because if Starship somehow survived reentry and failed to perform the
burn, the investigation to pinpoint the exact reason would likely take a very long time.
After all, analyzing data from minutes of plasma reentry wouldn’t be easy.
Now that they might not need to finish the analysis before the next flight, they can
attempt a landing burn without worrying about significantly delaying Flight 5.
This is why I mentioned waiting for the official flight profile!
Initially, it seemed that this flight would be less exciting than Flight 3, as it
was missing elements like Raptor ignition. But now that we know that the Ship can
perform a landing burn, the coast phase and reentry will be even more intense!
That’s the plan for Flight 4, but SpaceX also released a deep dive into what happened
during Flight 3and how they intend to prevent similar issues during the next launch.
However, before I show you that, I have a big announcement to make.
I’ll be in Town for Flight 4. We’ll have a party! It’s a
bit of a tradition already, and I’ve done this before, but this time,
you can grab a spot and be part of it. Head over to raptoroost.com with one r
in the middle and fill out the waiver! The party is on launch day, and after
the launch which I’ll watch and hopefully stream at Raptor Roost as well.
The link is in the description! I’m looking forward to seeing you
at the IFT4 after-launch party! Spots are limited and filling up fast! In
fact, we’re almost full for both the launch and the party. The party starts as soon
as the roads open again! Raptoroost.com ! Now, before we continue with Starship news,
we’ve looked into our channel metrics, and there are over 2 million returning
monthly viewers who have not subscribed yet. Help us improve the channel even further
by double-checking that you’ve hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss our updates!
While you're at it, give us a like and become a WAI supporter for exclusive SpaceX updates!
With it, you get access to daily Starbase photo galleries, including satellite,
aerial, and ground photos of SpaceX’s progress and countless other extras on top.
And no matter how much you decide to give, Everyone gets the same supporter content and
access! You decide what you want to give! Okay, now here’s the next crazy surprise.
Let’s revisit flight 3, shall we? While the mishap investigation is still
ongoing, SpaceX already has an idea of what went wrong during this mission.
Everything with the booster was going pretty well until the Boostback phase.
At this point, 13 out of 33 Raptors were supposed to change the course of Booster 10
to splash down just 30 kilometers or 19 miles away from Starbase in the Gulf of Mexico.
During this maneuver, there is a moment where six engines shut down.
Initially, it was theorized that this might help guide the Booster
to the correct spot, but SpaceX confirmed that this shutdown wasn’t planned at all…
To protect the prototype once these engines failed, the boostback was ended prematurely,
and these six engines were disabled. Consequently, the Booster's landing spot shifted
to about 100 kilometers or 62 miles offshore. As the prototype was preparing for a soft-water
landing, SpaceX decided to fire only the remaining seven working engines instead of the required 13.
Even then, only two of them actually ignited, and finally, at 462 meters or 1,500 feet above
the Gulf of Mexico, the Booster exploded. According to SpaceX, the issues during the
boostback and landing burns were once again caused by filter blockages in the oxygen tank.
This was already a problem during flight two. Essentially, when something too big blocks
the filter, it causes the pressure at the LOX turbopump to drop, which results in
a change in the fuel-to-oxidizer ratio. Rocket engines are such precise devices that
even a slight disturbance in this ratio can cause the engine to melt and explode, which
is likely what happened during the landing. Unfortunately, it’s unclear what
exactly blocked those filters. The forces of the flight could tear apart
components like the slosh baffles, or perhaps the filters were blocked due to ice formation.
I’m not saying it was the Aliens… Either way, SpaceX has apparently found a solution
for this problem and implemented it into Booster 11, so hopefully, it will survive this time.
However, there’s still one more thing regarding the Super Heavy we need to discuss…
With flight 4, SpaceX plans to drop the hot staging ring after separation,
but why would they do that? It doesn’t seem like full reusability, right?
There are likely two reasons for this decision. First, there’s the obvious reason. Mass savings.
According to the FAA’s re-evaluation of the impact of Starship launches from Starbase, the ring
itself weighs about 9 tons or 20,000 pounds. Given the Booster's dry mass
of 200 tons or 400,000 pounds, the ring’s mass isn’t completely insignificant.
Super Heavy Block 1 wasn’t designed with hot staging in mind, and its landing tanks likely
can’t accommodate this additional weight. Therefore, the Booster might not even be able to
return to the launch site with the ring attached. The other, more complex reason stems from a
theory that during flight three, the ring actually detached from the Booster, which wasn’t planned.
The idea is that the ring got damaged during hot staging, and then during descent, aerodynamic
forces ripped it from the top of the prototype. This threw off the PID or avionics controller,
which was tuned with the ring attached, resulting in the strange oscillations seen
in the last seconds of Booster 10’s flight. For now, this is just speculation and hasn’t
been confirmed by SpaceX, but it’s possible that even if they recover a Block 1 Booster,
they will do so without the hot staging ring. SpaceX also confirmed the reason
for the issues with the Ship, which was rather obvious from the start.
All the problems stemmed from clogging in valves responsible for roll, which resulted in
loss of attitude control, cancellation of the in-space burn, and tumbling during re-entry.
The solution was to add more roll vents, which we’ve already seen installed on Ship 29, and the
addition of anti-clogging hardware in those vents. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be able to
judge if these changes helped Starship survive reentry and landing in about a week from now.
What do you think? Will it be a 100% success this time? Place your bets in the
comments. I’m eager to read your thoughts! Okay, enough Starship for today. Let’s
now take a quick look at the second most launched US rocket - The Electron.
Despite delays from the payload providers, Peter Beck’s company is going strong, and it aims
to beat its 2023 launch record of ten missions. As we approach June, they’ve
already completed six launches! The latest one was once again dedicated to NASA.
PREFIRE is a tiny CubeSat that aims to fill a significant gap in our knowledge about our planet.
This spacecraft can monitor the amount of Earth’s heat that escapes to space, particularly
around the Arctic and Antarctic regions, using a thermal infrared spectrometer.
What’s interesting about this mission is that NASA actually needs two such satellites on different
orbital planes to make accurate observations. As such, once the Electron lifted off
with the first PREFIRE on May 25th, the clock started ticking.
To synchronize the two satellites, the second PREFIRE has to be launched
within three weeks of the first one. This means that Rocket Lab has to put it
in orbit before the second half of June. Fingers crossed that they’ll
be able to pull it off! Lastly, we have an update from a
company working on potentially the first commercial space station - VAST!
Their Haven-1 station is being designed with SpaceX’s ecosystem in mind.
It will not only be launched by SpaceX but will also use Dragon as the
main transport to and from the station. They also announced in April that the station
would receive a Starlink upgrade, which would allow for fast internet access in space.
Then, in May, they showed off a solar wing, four of which will provide power to Haven-1.
Recently, they proved that their station is more than just renders and
concepts. Take a look at this! The company has already completed
the station’s structure Pathfinder. It’s a massive aluminum structure that allowed
them to test all the fabrication processes as well as different geometries that
will be used to build the actual station. Its shape significantly differs
from what the renders showed, but it’s unclear whether that’s the final design.
With this crucial step completed, they will now move on to building a similar test article, but
this time dedicated to pressure and load testing. If all goes according to plan, the station
will be launched in August 2025 atop Falcon 9. However, as always in the space
industry, expect some delays. Today I want to show you something extraordinary.
This is the work of An Duong, the mastermind behind morethan3d.com. A Rolls Royce jet
engineer during the day and one of the best 3D print magicians in the space community at
night. He's been sending me models for years now. Many of the props on my set are from him and now
he has something new that he'd like to promote. If you're looking for absolutely fantastic 1:200
scale ship models that you can even take apart, including glowing plumes or any other props,
you just saw, go to morethan3d.com and An is even throwing something on top for you: if you
have a 3D printer and don't want to order the ready to assemble models, use the code FELIX10 at
checkout to get 10% off the SDL files of either the ship or the booster, to print them yourself
at home. I mean look at these! Thank you An, the WAI team and the space Community greatly
appreciate what you do for all of us! That’s it for today! Remember to smash that like
button. Subscribe for more awesome content! It’s what fuels the Algorithm and helps us immensely!
Check out our epic shirts in your favorite space nerd store! Link is in the description. And if
you want to train your space IQ even further, watch this video next to continue your
journey! Thank you very much for watching, and I’ll see you again in the next episode!
