SpaceX Starship Refilling Plan Change? Catching Arms Coming Soon, Cygnus NG-16 Mission

this video is sponsored by brilliant hey hey marcus house with you here and after the previous few breakneck weeks in boca chica things seem to be just a little calmer this week and we finally get to dive a little deeper on everything going on at starbase several things need to happen before spacex can start the fiery testing campaign of booster 4 and ship 20. we'll discuss orbital propellant transfer and the most recent numbers regarding the raptor design then of course we had the successful launch of cygnus 16 carrying supplies for the international space station okay so recently it's been pretty crazy right we went from having a bunch of sections for booster 4 and ship 20 scattered around the production site and within two weeks we were watching scenes like this the full starship stack was presented right here before our eyes for the very first time this did make waves around the world too a bunch of news networks did actually pick up the story and run it and what made this particularly special i think was the terrific scenes such as this here shared by elon musk that image there of course intended to take you back to the history made in the past with equally impressive technological feats of brilliance at the time including the launch stand the full starship and booster stack towers over 140 meters off the ground with the rocket alone making up 120 meters of that now repeatedly this week i was told in the comments that it doesn't look as big as expected but as always it is very hard to fathom the scale from a distance we see this quite simply with this terrific shot by the incredible rgv aerial photography at this distance yeah just looks like a rocket it's only when you see those humans for scale or the size of the monstrous cranes that it really becomes apparent if you stuck it next to the statue of liberty which is around 93 meters tall well yeah you get the idea it's big it's also very easy to forget just how fast all of this has come together yes of course we've seen those regular taunts telling us how far things are behind from elon's original planned schedule sure i mean i think this is always going to be a thing but just take a few moments to compare the launch site 12 months ago just a little over a year ago here on august 5th we witnessed the first flight of the sn5 prototype here we see it after it landing at the launch site it is truly amazing to see what kind of progress can be made when a profound and clear goal is put ahead as elon often quotes in interviews and on twitter rapidly reusable rockets are the key to making humanity a multi-planet species without those three r's we'll never be able to lower the cost needed for exploring the solar system efficiently it's absolutely clear that being fully and rapidly reusable is the goal for spacex and the progress seen over the past year is a true testament to how badly they want this if this isn't something that gets you excited about the future then i don't know what does of course this isn't guaranteed by any measure spacex has finite resources and this challenge is one never achieved before there are still a lot of ifs here it's why the space community cheers them on every chance we get i cover this every weekend and need your help to spread this story to those that are unaware of what is happening and thanks for helping us do that while spacex is innovating at this rapid pace we expect to continuously be amazed over the next decade on top of that it'll be a real treat to see the other launch providers walk the path that spacex is currently paving and this is not unlike the massive push for electric vehicles following in the wake of disruption led by tesla it really is astonishing to watch it all unfold and the real party starts once the full rocket has cleared the tower and successfully heads for orbit so last week we left with ship 20 having been rolled back to the launch site after being unstacked but what has happened this week thanks to the continuous and amazing work capturing the goings-on by bokeh chicago and nasa space flight we can see that it is quite a lot not the mad amount of stacking we've seen over the last few weeks but exciting stuff all the same so the engines on ship 20 are removed to allow for access to get the ship into a flight ready configuration not long after the stacking milestone musk himself sketched out a few of the tasks that are still in front of the rocket specifically he says that spacex still must complete a number of things which will only take another week or two ship 20s partially finished heat shield needed more work with it being around 98 done seems like that should be finished about now though right well not necessarily the tiles that were remaining after ship 20 was stacked are the tricky ones that require some custom shapes although most of these tiles come in a small number of variations dynamic machining is still required for some areas early in the week we could clearly see workers marking the tiles with these stickers which looks like an inspection process indicating where a tile may need to be replaced or tested starship goes here picking up incredible detail of all of that quite a number of these tiles are actually cracked already i'm not sure if this was just due to rapid installation issues or something else there the ship was rolled out into the open and after inspection they began removing a lot of those tiles prior to replacement on friday it was all rolled back to the launch site so we're hoping to see some further testing on this beast very soon secondly spacex needs to install some form of shield to protect booster 4's 29 raptor engines you've only got to look at this image to see why if all of this plumbing is not covered it might suffer very hard on re-entry i've always imagined seeing something like we see here on falcon 9. all of the plumbing is covered over leaving really just the engine bells exposed with the appropriate space to gimbal the engines they also need to finish installing plumbing and activating the massive ground support propellant storage tanks too and let's not forget about the construction and installation of the umbilical arm on the launch tower to fuel and power the starship elon reconfirmed on friday that the starships will still be being caught by mecca zilla as well as the booster and due to that there is no need for legs until they go for a moon or mars landing beautiful new animation here by tij and m 3d animations check out their feeds if you aren't following it should work very closely to this and mechazilla will have arms very soon on tuesday the 10th of august spacex removed booster 4 off the launch ring and on wednesday off it rolled along highway 4 back to the construction site to prepare for testing i'm sure that it's going to be facing an even more ambitious pressure and staticfire test campaign than we've seen in the past before we knew it the removal of engines soon followed the next steps would be to perform testing of the central thrust plate then pressure tests and static fires would follow after that the big test with spacex moving onward to a full 29 raptor static fire on the orbital launch pad that is going to be quite amazing to see speaking of raptors a new hydraulic ram system to test out the thrust plate for future boosters has been spotted this week and this of course simulates the forces the plate will experience with the roaring raptors firing underneath the rams push upward with that same force to test that it all holds okay i'm not sure if this is an updated design to the previous ram structure or not so what is better than checking out the hydraulic rams for the inner set of engines well i'm glad you asked they're curious starship watchers because this here is the same sort of system to test out the outer engines as well all 20 of them this is the first time that we've seen a device for testing the outer set so we can only assume that booster 4 is destined to be stress tested in the coming few weeks by this thing i suspect this mystery structure here may be combined with the ram systems for booster tests but i really don't have any evidence to back that up that is pure speculation there right now what do you think let me know in the comments below so yes we're going to see a fairly lengthy testing campaign for both booster 4 and ship 20. let's face it we really do not want to see a full stack exploding on the pad if they can at least make it off the pad and a few kilometers up and out over the ocean that would be a great start i imagine that there would be a fair amount of paranoia around this first launch behind booster 4 of course is booster 5 and we've now seen various sections of this now including the new common dome sleeve and forward tank number 2. also a sneaky screen grab from elon strolling past this section here in tim's part 2 interview also tells us that this is for ship 21 which could go with booster number 5. the aft dome is right there so before we know it we'll be seeing the stacking of the next ship and booster okay so let's talk about the refilling method that came to light from that same interview previously of course the idea was that a tanker and ship would dock together from rear ports in the interview here elon said that he is not sure that this will still be the method it might be something quite different now this may not necessarily mean that we'll be seeing something like this although saying that elon did reply to this saying that it looks hot not sure of course if that was confirmation or sarcasm we'll have to find out in the future the reason behind the community going a little while with speculation here is because elon mentioned in the interview that spacex had moved the fill drain lines to the side instead of underneath on the starship the systems involved with setting up such a filling process were adding mass to the booster why would you do that if you can use the ground support equipment and lighten the dry mass instead this is the same reason that spacex has chosen to remove the legs and catch it right out of the air the problem of course with refilling in zero gravity is that the liquids are just all floating around there's no force of gravity pushing the fuels in any direction so if they want to be connected like this what you first need is for the liquid oxygen and liquid methane to settle into the bottom of the tanks in both ships for that starship can use a very small amount of reaction control to push up from the bottom now that only needs to be a tiny acceleration by the way using very minimal fuel we see spacex do this with the second stage of the falcon 9 just before relight all the time this is not a problem with short durations but even a tiny acceleration of even a few centimeters per second squared might mess up the orbit quite a bit when provided over the course of 10 minutes or so keep in mind that we're talking about roughly 150 tonnes of propellant being transferred so that will take some time could it be that they don't just push forward but try to also roll as well but then how would you actually get the fuels to come over well as many are suggesting you could just put pumps in however i speculate that instead you could manipulate the gas pressures in both tanks if you can increase pressure in the tanker and lower pressure in the ship the fuels would simply be sucked through there's no need for pumps in that case just a pressure difference with a tenth of a bar would press with a ton per square metre onto the propellant i mean the ships need all these systems for autogenous pressurization and recondensing anyway so this could be a fairly straightforward thing i'm not an expert in such things though so i'd love to know what your thoughts are now we've got some more insights regarding the raptor engines as well in part two of tim's interview elon said that the raptor vacuum engine or rvac for short has an expansion ratio of around 80 to 1 which is to be improved to around 90 to 1. using the 80 to 1 in this example the expansion ratio essentially means that the area at the end of the vacuum engine bell is 80 times the area of the throat at the thinnest part of the engine the larger that you can make that ratio the better for the specific impulse we assume that this applies to the rvac version too as the numbers don't really add up to us otherwise as anaes here calculated with such an expansion ratio the engine belt might be smaller than 2.3 meters and the efficiency unrealistically high 2.3 meters is the estimate that the 3d artists out there use for the current size interestingly as well nearly a year ago elon said that the expansion ratio is 107 to 1 while talking about the current rvac that actually makes more sense there are practical limits on how big that you can make the engine belt and how small that you can make the throat though you can see how big those three vacuum bells are on ship 20 and that is a 9 meter wide vehicle but the problem here isn't just the width of the nozzle you can only increase the expansion ratio in a reasonable manner when also adding extra length to it as well in the case of starship this is more the limiting factor to allow more relative length you'd need to reduce the overall size of the engine so yes i'm very curious how they want to solve this when using the same chambers and pumps for the engines which will increase the thrust it doesn't help that just weeks before elon said that the vacuum engine is currently expected to achieve a specific impulse or isp of 378 seconds and this may then go up beyond 380. to us this just seems impossible with an expansion ratio of 90. so yes there are many open questions that i've got but raptor version 2 is coming to the test stand in a month or so and it will be more compact and streamlined elon mentioned that all the pipes and cables of the current version look like a christmas tree compared to raptor 2. so i can't wait to see how different that looks hopefully there will be even more details provided then as well spacex is also working on a much simpler nose cone design as well which is a much neater design than previous versions you can see from the current style three separate rows containing the rectangular panels individually pressed to shape and then welded this here is the new one which will be made from two rows with the sheets being stretch formed probably not too dissimilar i guess to this kind of process that we see here we should start seeing new prototypes using this style appearing very soon now there is a lot more information in tim's video all linked out in the description check them out if you haven't seen them yet it was a great series the ground support equipment or gse tank development has continued strongly early in the week gse tank 7 was mostly stacked in the mid bay just awaiting its after dome at this point the cryo shells continued stacking as well this cryo shell here was lifted and placed over the gse3 liquid oxygen tank one here rolled to the launch site early in the week and as luck would have it jack captured this interesting label proving that this one in particular is shell 4 which is for one of the two liquid oxygen tanks gse tank 6 rolled to the launch site mid-week to be placed into the tank farm at the same time the booster 4 was rolling in the opposite direction the gse tank actually needed to make way there no time for separate road closures on friday that was then lifted into the tank farm for those that haven't been following these very closely these shells are placed over the top of the main tanks underneath to insulate them brendan lewis here has been keeping us up to date with all of these changes as well which you can see from his most recent diagram now you should notice the new gse area in the bottom corner that lets us know how things are going with that bird's eye perspective we also get the contents of each tank as far as we know them currently as we see here the oxygen and methane are separated by the water and nitrogen which helps to limit some explosive potential in case of a disaster this is all very handy for quick reference so follow brendan on twitter or patreon there to access these diagrams as soon as they released he does a fantastic job keeping these things updated now we also had some launch action this week from northrop grumman's antares rocket roaring off the pad on august 10th with cygnus 16. we'll talk more about that in just a moment but first a thank you to brilliant for being this video sponsor as our videos dive deeper into areas that we are a little less familiar with i often need to expand my areas of learning and research with the great habits learned from brilliant interactive learning structure we've been able to provide insight into the math and science to hopefully allow us to better explain the topics that we cover every week you can start off with a fairly basic idea such as this lesson on the center of mass this is all part of brilliance newly updated scientific thinking course packed with interactive exercises just like this that let you visualize these ideas quickly and intuitively shifting the balance point here lets you immediately see how the mobile balances out well guess what the center of mass in rocketry is a similar idea just a lot more advanced evolve your way up through classical mechanics which outlines the key ideas behind all things rockets learn the fundamentals to start an incredible journey understanding chemical relations between propellants or the way that the rocket equation works this is just one example of the rabbit hole of topics you may find that triggers your interest on top of that you get to expand your level of learning through daily challenges and visual concepts that help strengthen your knowledge if you would like to give it a try head to brilliant.org marcus house the first 200 people will get 20 off the first year of brilliant premium the link is in the description below so yes we finally got to see some launch activity with the cygnus 16 mission this launch took place on tuesday from nasa's wallops flight facility ng 16 which is their 16th commercial resupply mission had its liftoff delayed slightly due to a helium leak but that was quickly addressed allowing the countdown to quickly resume their launch window opportunity was running out fast so the ground crews did an amazing job here to keep things on track absolutely roaring away from the pad with the two russian-made rd-181 engines the launch itself was a beautiful sight just listen to that raw the sound of these launchers is always astounding northrop grumman's antares 230 series rocket here safely carried its payload to low earth orbit where it commenced chasing down the international space station as is tradition this flight's cygnus cargo vessel was named in honour of alison onozuka with a two-day journey completed the capture of cygnus was achieved using the canadarm2 controlled by megan mcarthur and tomar pisgay it was then birthed to the unity module by flight controllers in houston where it will remain now until november it will then detach and head back for a destructive re-entry along with a heap of waste from the aging space outpost so yes with just over 3 700 kilograms or 8 200 pounds of research crew supplies and hardware this represented the largest resupply load to date the crew of course will always welcome some special treats such as assorted cheese pizza kits apples tomatoes and kiwi fruit good food is always a great morale booster also on board is another mounting bracket assembly for the next set of roll out solar arrays that will augment the power supply for the iss there's also some pretty cool science experiments on board such as the redwire regolith 3d printer an idea which could possibly evolve to one day built structures at luna or mars bases also some experiments that due to having a perishable nature are very well suited to the pop top fairing unique to the antares launch vehicle i've included a link below if you'd like to check out some more of the other experiments including krepe co2 scrubber and blob so yes it was nice to see that launch occur after quite a slow week with space launch activity so yes that has you up to date for yet another week i release these videos every saturday and if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to follow the industry i'd be grateful if you thought the channel here was worth subscribing to i certainly appreciate you watching all the way through here thank you to you the incredible viewers and supporters that help us with what we do seriously i just cannot convey how much this means to me and the team working with me here you could be a subscriber a patron a youtube member supporting what we do or you could be picking up some sweet gear from our merch store including this shirt that you see here that design is also 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Channel: Marcus House

Views: 513,408

Keywords: spacex launch tower catch, Spacex super heavy, spacex orbital refueling, Spacex starship progress, spacex orbital refilling, spacex starship full stack, spacex boca chica, spacex booster 4 launch date, spacex starship update, spacex starship stacking, Spacex orbital launch, elon musk spacex, spacex starship sn 20, spacex super heavy booster, spacex starship sn20, Cygnus NG-16 Mission, spacex launch, Spacex starship landing, Spacex starship, marcus house, spacex

Id: jtGiMWWqvwM

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021