SpaceX Starship Updates, GOES T, Three Crew Dragons, The Owl's Night Continues & JWST Update

this video is supported by squarespace the all-in-one platform for your online presence hey hey marcus house with you here over at starbase the next generation of starship is already starting to take shape while further rounds of testing are being performed on the last rocket lab kicked off their 2022 launch campaign this week there was something extra special about this electoral mission and it wasn't even about the rocket united launch alliance unleashed the dominator this week sending the latest goes weather satellite to orbit we have the james webber space telescope deployment updates and a bunch of new crewed missions awarded to spacex so kicking right off at spacex's starbase let's start talking about domes you may recall that the nose cones recently underwent changes that allowed the 82 separate sections to be reduced to only 34. this was achieved by changing the manufacturing process from stamped to stretched formed pieces which allows for much larger curved panels due to not needing massive and heavy dyes so yes it's exciting news because it looks very likely that this manufacturing change is soon coming now to the domes as well firstly a new jig was spotted that looks similar to the nose cone jig but obviously in the shape of a dome and then this week these stretched form panels were spotted being delivered on the back of a truck which seemed a good fit for the dome shape when modelling these new domes it's very obvious the dome has been flattened along with a reduction here from 43 panels to only around 18 to 20. this news even relates back to a tweet from elon musk in 2020 when he stated that the design is evolving rapidly and it would be great to flatten the domes so yes it has taken two years but we are now finally at that point so there's many benefits of this new dome design firstly the fact that it has been flattened means that there is less material required therefore decreasing how much each dime weighs also the older domes took up a lot more vertical volume this newer design decreases that which instead increases the vertical volume of the payload bay this would surely be needed as well within moving the methane header tank up there as well another benefit well the fuel pieces result in fewer welds and therefore less potential weak points and less risk of problems during manufacturing all of which make them quicker to produce under the cover of fog last week ship 24's common dome section was stacked on top of the middle liquid oxygen section in the high bay these two sections were welded together using the high bay stacking robot in a similar way to this you may have noticed that the nose cone barrels are five rings tall but they can only be built up to four rings in the tents due to that they have had to add another in the high bay up until this point each section was welded to the other by hand and would require an overlap to strengthen the join between the rings and to decrease the chances of a potential weak point now that these welds are done by a robot similar to those used in the tends to stack single rings together the need for such an overlap is eliminated previously with the three overlaps on the tank section of a ship and with each overlap being around 10 centimetres this would increase the height of the ship by 30 centimeters although that's a very small height increase it is an interesting takeaway nonetheless also this ship 24 section features a new design of the uledge thruster nozzle looking a little more like a cowbell than the bullnose seen on previous designs on the new booster transport stand workers have added two alignment pins the same part that was added to the orbital launch mount not so long ago in the close-up you can see that this part does not have any connectors at the end but instead a ball joint shape that allows it to slide into the concave slots on the two of the hydraulic power units on each side of the booster these pins will be used to align the booster with the stand by sliding and swiveling up and down this part will likely only be used while the booster is placed on the transport stand or orbital launch mount once the boost is grabbed it will then retract again so yeah this should allow an even quicker and easier lift of the booster now speaking of boosters a small update with booster 8 on tuesday its after dome was set up on the sleeving stand and its sleeve was flipped upside down ready to be sleeved over the dome that sleeving then occurred not too long after seen on starship gazers live stream now on wednesday rgv aerial photography tweeted an image that he captured from above of the start of this massive construction of a large production building beside tent three this is the very start of the first phase of turning starbase into a full blown rocket factory rgv revealed that the building is expected to be over 28 000 square meters and 18 meters tall this we believe will replace all of the large production tents heading over to the orbital launch site and just take a quick look at this in the middle of the week we saw yet another cryo test of booster 4 on the orbital launch mount the pad was cleared at just before three and soon after the orbital tank farm began to vent frost then began to form on the bottom of the liquid oxygen tank indicating that the vehicle was being filled with the liquid and nitrogen not too long after a frost line also appeared on booster 4's methane tank after a few hours the liquid oxygen tank was filled right to the brim while the methane tank began filling further in the end that top tank was filled to around 50 before the levels in both tanks started to decrease at just after midnight and although the tanks were still filled with nitrogen the road was reopened late in the week another cryo test of ship 20 although as i said the other week most of these tests are likely more checking out the fueling systems and processes rather than the prototypes themselves some other interesting updates continue at the orbital tank farm a wall is in the midst of being constructed around the new horizontal methane tanks to allow them to be approved for use this we assume is all heading towards solving the issue with the vertical methane tanks that we talked about last week we had more exciting news in florida as well we know that there is only one kind of tower that has still segments that look like this this column section piece was spotted at nasa's causeway and was headed towards the kennedy space center this is among the first parts of a starship orbital integration tower arriving in florida in a flight this week by fariel the mystery circular concrete pad had this white tank rapidly installed now this does look dare i say a little like a water tower but we'll need to wait and see we already see the bases ready for the launch tower segments placed down ready for construction right here are those tower column pieces it won't be long until we see the massive launch tower segments rolling down the launch site as we did at boca chica as shown by mary with nasa space flight and the team there completed another flight to pointing out specifically the work being done in this area here at the launch complex which will be where mechazilla 2 will be constructed so it shouldn't be too long until we start to see the build up of florida's orbital launch tower a big shout out again to mauricio who was chasing down spacex's starship offshore platform deimos which is a former deepwater oil drilling rig for those unfamiliar this is going to be refitted to be a starship launch and a landing platform in future which is why we suspect it is heading away now to be restationed for further work a big thanks there to rgv for all the continual work and coverage patreon support there is also amazing for the many of you helping to assist in the cost of that coverage also sharing and following what he does there helps with that a great deal as well thanks also of course for helping me here all that interaction is just brilliant and i still keep getting more and more comments from all of you amazing people out there telling me that you've been unintentionally unsubscribed if you're loving what i'm doing just double check that you haven't been affected by that i suspect some spam bots out there are just being a tad aggressive we have the james webb space telescope still progressing very smoothly in all of its alignment exercises just this week we saw these images being shared by a nasa web telescope on twitter what you are seeing here is all 18 of the separate mirrors now aligned enough so that we can see one unified image this has evolved over the previous images that were shared of the 18 scatter dots which we can see in this hex layout from here they performed what they call a segment alignment as shown in this before and after shot at this point they were also aligning the secondary mirror the precision needed here is something quite hard to fathom as stated in their blog although image stacking puts all of the light from a star in one place on the camera's detector the mirror segments are still acting as 18 small telescopes rather than one big one the segments now need to be lined up to each other with an accuracy smaller than the wavelength of light now the step underway as we speak is a coarse phasing stage which will continue to find and tweak the vertical displacement between the mirror segments this all aids in making the single star that we see here progressively sharper and more focused so as scott manley here put it quite nicely surprising exactly nobody nasa has awarded another three missions to spacex with crew dragon to transport astronauts to the international space station as part of the commercial crew program that is a huge boost to spacex i'll jump into that more in just a moment but quickly a huge thank you to squarespace today for their support of this video do you need a website well squarespace is the easiest way to make a beautiful online presence for your business you can start your passion project that perhaps you've been putting off right away maybe you've said to yourself that websites are too expensive or difficult to get set up and running well these days that is just not the case a lot has changed over the past few years maybe you would just like to set up a personal website as a cv perhaps a blog to share your experiences with the world you could be producing amazing photography art or craft work that you'd love to try selling yep you can do that too all with the inbuilt ecommerce systems provided simply select any of the industry leading website templates with beautiful designer fonts and colors that closely match what you have in your mind and you can be up and running in just hours a website all ready for your content to go live get started by heading to squarespace.com marcus house and save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain you'll find that link in the description below so yes this new award to spacex is significant this is of course because of all the issues that have faced boeing's starliner vehicle the idea way back in 2014 when nasa awarded the contracts to both boeing and spacex they were assuming both vehicles would be operational and certified well before now this would have allowed the two providers to fly equal missions and of course allow redundancy if either of the launch vehicles or crew transport capsules needed downtime for repairs or anomaly investigations as it stands spacex is the only option available hence why they have now been awarded the crew 7 crew 8 and crew 9 missions this brings the total contractor spacex to almost 3.5 billion dollars with the nine missions all now awarded it's just amazing who would have thought a few years ago that we would see them running away here with literally no viable competition now that's not to say that i don't want to see redundancy ideally starliner's issues will be resolved soon so that there is another option as far as we know starliner is still to be launched on its orbital flight test 2 mission sometime mid this year assuming no further delays are announced also keep in mind that ula's atlas 5 is a vehicle that's being phased out to be replaced by vulcan centaur so there are only finite missions left with atlas given the rd-180 engines for atlas 5 are designed and built in russia there is very good reason to ensure the upcoming vulcan centaur is up and running as soon as possible as far as we've heard ula have in stock all of the engines needed until atlas 5 is retired that is at least a tiny slice of good news amongst all of the horrible news that we're facing right now starliner is designed to also fly on other launch vehicles such as vulcan centaur but i wonder how many starliner launches we are ever going to see on atlas 5 given just how long it's taken to get it certified by nasa for crew transportation spacex of course was certified back in november of 2020 how time flies and how quickly competitors can be left behind we had the next beautiful launch of the goes weather satellite mid-week as well what an amazing history united launch alliance have had when it comes to launching these missions since 1975 ula has had a strong reputation for reliability and safety while also delivering these payloads to orbit and i will say it's very good to see microphones have gotten just a little smaller over the years just take a look at the size of that thing this week was no different with the dominator a powerful atlas 541 launch vehicle waiting for liftoff on march the 1st from space launch complex 41 at cape canaveral space force station this one had the five meter diameter fairings protecting the payload from aerodynamic forces on ascent the main engines and the four solid rocket boosters combined to provide 30 million horsepower tory here was describing this while riding indigo here not sure why we need to insult the horse i mean we would need 30 million of them to power an atlas v the actual horsepower of a horse is about 15 horsepower what oh because the average output of a horse over the course of a workday ends up being around one horsepower what a stupid measurement so what exactly is ghost tea it is the latest u.s national oceanic and atmospheric administration satellite well one of four in the go series it's got enhanced capabilities to gather data on floods fire lightning tornadoes volcanic activity and even more and this keeps many agencies up to speed with almost real-time information so yes with a mighty raw here atlas was quickly on its way to deliver goes-t to a low earth parking orbit reaching mach 1 in a mere 35 seconds almost two minutes into flight the four depleted solid rocket boosters were jettisoned a few seconds apart with their job now complete a very impressive sight there with the cameras showing us the boosters tumbling back to earth around three and a half minutes from liftoff this beast had risen above the dense upper atmosphere and deployed the protective payload fairings another minute and that was it for the propellant guzzling first stage now empty engine shutdown first stage separation and the centaur upper stage ignited one of my favorite engines the rl10 used on the upper stage of atlas to complete the initial target orbit i just love this engine for a number of reasons but largely due to it being about the most efficient rocket engine flying with a specific impulse at around 450 seconds burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in the same way the rs-25 has about the exact same performance in this case the rl-10 needed to fire up for a total of three times the second burn raised the apogee to a near geosynchronous altitude and the final third engine ignition increased the orbital perigee to almost 8 900 kilometers where it was then released at this time the ghost tee is then redesignated to goes 18 and it will take position as the goes west as we see here in this animation it will eventually replace go 17 which launched in 2018 but unfortunately it suffered cooling issues with its advanced baseline imager instrument ghost 17 will eventually be moved into a storage orbit so yes a super impressive ula launch there with tory the space cowboy and his trusty steed indigo riding off into the sunset of yet another successful mission yet another launch of starlink on thursday and wow are they pushing hard to get these launches done rapidly this is the ninth launch in nine weeks in this case spacex launched 47 styling satellites from launch complex 39a looks pretty dirty that booster there doesn't it and that is because it is the 11th flight for this particular booster eight of which have been styling flights as well the landing was on the drone ship just read the instructions which makes it now tied with two other boosters as the reuse leaders not a great deal unique to this flight but what i think is important especially this week is to acknowledge what this technology allows yep optic is great for those that are lucky enough to live in the right area but in remote areas and in this case a war-torn country this is huge loads of styling dishes delivered as stated by a musk to allow a little assistance to those in ukraine cut off from the world as stated starlink is the only non-russian communication system still working in some parts of ukraine that is essential connectivity for communication for sure he did also urge caution as these can be a target for attack switch it on only in bursts to get critical information in and out place it far away from people lightly camouflage the disk as well it's a frightening time but a great example of this technology so thanks again to spacex for yet another successful launch hopefully there are many more people that are really beginning to understand the power of this network rocket lab and synspective teamed up this week for the first electron launch for 2022 with another earth observation satellite to deliver in a wonderful sign of continued growth for rocket lab they have now a second launch pad online at launch complex one at new zealand's launch site with a nice set of orders you got there i beg your pardon the owls are beautiful with electron there poised ready to go from this brand new pad b this now means that the launch capacity from this location has doubled capable now of handling a launch every three days this is all thanks to the three satellite clean rooms and a vehicle assembly building just for starters with the wallops island virginia facility included here and yet to be used they can handle around 132 launch assignments per year incredibly 120 of those can be used from this low-cost southern privately owned and operated launch complex even better is now being able to bump a customer up the schedule should a delay happen to another launch so yes very handy to have that new pad available in this week's mission dubbed the hours night continues this was the first in a series of three strix beta satellite launches in this case it is a dedicated payload for the 24th launch for rocket lab the second of such satellites should be launched for this customer in 2022 and then the third mission is scheduled for 2023 you may recall back in december of 2020 the al's night begins marked the very first dedicated launch for synspective for the strix alpha satellite that was the very first of a planned constellation for some 30 earth observers now you might have also noticed a slight difference to this mission compared to others and that is this right here the red stripe if you didn't know indicates a recovery attempt however that wasn't being done for this mission instead rocket lab were continuing to test systems associated with the recovery including enhanced batteries to increase the performance of electrons second stage so it looks like we'll be waiting a little longer for the first helicopter catch test the countdown to launch was flawless with plenty of updates and information to absorb during the webcast with that electron left off the pad at 9 37 a.m local time and hurtled skyward quickly disappearing over the cloud cover some terrific views there back to earth as it powered its way to space main engine cutoff separation and fairing jettison all smooth as well and the second stage continued on its way the upgraded depleted batteries were ejected in this process that rocket lab called a hot swap and in just moments second engine cutoff and stage separation of the kickstage leaving it to take over and deliver the strix satellite to orbit with a short coast phase required here once it reached apogee or the highest point in its orbit the kickstage fired up and circularized the orbit for payload deployment although we had no live feed of it rocket lab provided us with a nice little visual simulation of the final step to close out this mission that was the 110th satellite delivered to orbit by rocket lab so what is next well because they can switch to pad a nasa's capstone mission should launch around march the 19th capstone will be the very first satellite to operate in a near rectilinear halo orbit around the moon so stay tuned for further news on this mission there is quite some exciting stuff coming up there what's the part of that mission that you are most excited about let me know below so yes you are now caught up on yet another week of space goodness lots more coming in next saturday's video so stay tuned there if you want to help support what we do here on the channel there are a number of real simple ways along with the typical stuff that you probably hear a million times all over youtube not going to say it but of course simply talking to people about space let people know why you love the topic and why you think it is so interesting if you love what i do like the many scrolling by here the link is right there on screen thanks for all the support and of course if you need some new gear 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Channel: Marcus House

Views: 220,208

Keywords: spacex eva suit, spacex polaris, ula goes-t, spacex starship launch, spacex starship landing, starship crew, rocket lab launch, spacex starship orbital test, crew dragon, Spacex starship, elon musk spacex, starbase, spacex launch, spacex starlink, spacex boca chica, Spacex starship live, Spacex starship update, Spacex orbital launch, marcus house, Spacex starship progress, spacex news, spacex orbital launch tower, spacex, jwst update

Id: NI18aWdchVg

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2022