SpaceX's Massive Updates for Flight 4 are Astounding!

so with the previous week being a little quieter than usual it had that Hallmark feeling of Calm before the storm and boy was that right SpaceX are gearing up not just for flight 4 but also for future flights so much to dive into today but outside Texas there has been an absolute flurry of activity and honestly it is one of those weeks where it was hard to figure out what to focus on at any given time so sit back relax and hold on this is another massive one okay we can see you coming down the ladder now hey hey Marcus Housey here and Starship flight test 4 looks to be right around the corner now there has been a massive amount of preparation and also some areas that took a bit of a different turn compared to what we initially speculated if you recall from a few weeks back SpaceX was working a way to fully integrate the four new horizontal nitrogen tanks into the tank farm well that was not where they stopped working around the clock they've hooked up everything for the horizontal liquid oxygen tanks as well as an example check out the main pipe delivering the liquid oxygen to the five tanks here right by the main entrance to the launch site they all look to be fully wired up and ready to go with them venting away that indicates that they were either already loading cryogenic propellant or at least verifying the systems now originally I thought that SpaceX would do this after the fourth flight but they have had a little more time up their sleeve than they had first expected why not use that extra time to more fully invest in the new horizontal tank setup indeed it seems that the vertical tanks might soon be a thing of the past altogether of course you recall SpaceX ripped the old converted water tank out a few weeks ago that has been almost completely scrapped with only the base remaining and the concrete platform where the tank sat is also being demolished so right next to that now the first liquid nitrogen tank is also being fully decommissioned and it was quite a spectacle when the teams opened up the main drain port for the perlite yes it looks like they weren't fully prepared to deal with the Sudden Rush of that insulation material just gushing out there perlite has a solid gravel like consistency but with a big structure like this it essentially looks to flow out like a liquid doesn't it anyway they finally managed to mount the drain Port so that they could unload it onto trucks to be then taken away this is the first time by the way that we've seen them try to unload that stuff before removing a tank the other three that they've already discarded were only ever used for water storage so it never had the per light installed once that insulation is fully removed from within that tank shell they'll lift it up slice it and that will Mark the end of the fourth tank it's going to be interesting to see what SpaceX would do with the new real estate right in the tank Farm close by over at the horizontal tanks the vaporizers here were simply plumbed in while they were still laying down well that's one way to do it I'm wondering if these will end up where the vertical tanks are still standing so with all of these new changes to the tank farm it would make sense to test it all out right well on Tuesday this week the roads were closed off and we could see venting from well everywhere really the launch Mount the tower and both the liquid oxygen and the liquid methane sub chillers as a nice piece of supporting evidence we could see on lab padr Rover 2 camera that the liquid oxygen line and also the liquid nitrogen line frosted over indeed both of those propellants are now actively stored and used from the horizontal tanks heading over to the orbital launch Mount all of the clamps and holds down linkages of been reinstalled now the only thing that remained was to use the SpaceX crane to hook up and verify that all the updated systems are all good to launch keep an eye out for the mechanism in the coming days or weeks which is usually used to ensure the clamps are perfectly level the tower arms also continue to attract a lot of attention and this one that recently received the new actuator has been getting put through some pretty epic testing as time has passed the tests have really ramped up that speed yes that is in real time now I'm sure with more tests coming they're going to hopefully reduce that quite visible bounciness once it gets to the closed position I suspect there is probably a dampening addition coming soon to help with that in some way but based on these tests it really does look like SpaceX is wanting to catch the booster for flight 5 perhaps the idea is to have the arms simply closing directly into the super heavy tank and keep that pressure on until it slots into place they've reinstalled some of the foam padding onto the arms and we also see these ramped string is already present on most of the boosters and that should allow the arms to slide up into place they've even checked out both the booster quick disconnect as well as the ship quick disconnect arm by performing full speed retraction tests excitement ahead because that attempt is just going to be nuts so speaking of vehicles for the fifth flight Starship 30 this week made an appearance coming out of the second Mega Bay after its Raptor engines were recently installed here it was rolling its way down Highway way 4 and then straight in towards the suborbital pad just a few hours later up it went onto the pad and ready for testing Starship gazer was out there right away when the sun rose giving us an awesome view of the lewood side what is interesting here is that apart from the two roll events already present on ship 28 there are now two new ones just below the styling Pez dispenser door right between those is the new radio Dish location which was placed on the nose cone for previous ships along with that another change right here with what looks to be a sizable event possibly to depressurize the payload Bay so yes even though we're still in the version one ships they are still tweaking the design quite a lot now this is exciting the preparation for the second orbital Launchpad are in full swing and SpaceX have started assembling quite a massive dirt Mount here this is indeed where we suspected that the second pad and Tower will go so that checks out right over the other side of the wall in front of the gateway to my sign even more dirt is being delivered here to raise this quite large area up to the same level as the road perhaps this will be the new parking lot location given that the old one was right where the new Launchpad might go to get between those two locations there was only one thing remaining knocking down part of that wall yeah they never get too attached to the existing layout ripping into it whenever they update the design most exciting of course is that they have started with the pilings for the second pad and I imagine this is most likely for ground support equipment related to to the fluids bunker or the tank farm but evidence will grow as we watch this unfold over the next few weeks the progress over at the build site Rockets along as well the glass on the STA Factory is now coming in Fast and this is one of the last main items to fully complete the building just behind the high Bay the six-story parking lot has begun assembly as the foundations have been completed this is going to significantly reduce the amount of cars parked right at the roadside at the other side of the star Factory the new office building is rapidly taking shape I will say being in here is going to provide a truly epic view out towards the launch site booster 13 was recently moved out from here to the massis test site and that has now completed the usual two separate cryogenic tests the first one was done a little over a week ago filling the methane tank and the second one only early this week which tested out the oxygen tank seeing a load like that in only the methane tank still fills me with a little anxiety due to what happened with the sn3 test in in 2020 thankfully of course they have done those exact tests now for booster 11 and 12 with no such issues so a more routine test these days as is probably pretty obvious you can see booster 13 didn't have its hot staging ring but it did instead have its own little hat this is the same sort of thing test fitted on a booster forward Dome just behind the mega Bay a while ago that along with the pieces covering the grid fin holes will better protect the hardware inside rather than to just leaving it fully exposed to the elements with both cryogenic tests a success it was once again heading back towards the build site once it arrived it went straight into the first mega Bay where it should soon have all of its Raptor engines installed ahead of its own static fire and launch campaign so yes the big question that I'm sure that you all have is how are both flight 4 vehicles going booster 11 is fully being prepared still and it looks like SpaceX are beefing up the supports surrounding the grid fin area with all of this welding action taking place that is most like all done now with a hot staging ring being moved inside we didn't get to see it being lifted but with the typical hot staging ring load spreader being moved out of the mega Bay a while later we can safely assume or think that this has been installed next door the tile work for ship 29 continues still with more areas now nicely patched up as they continue testing and moving over to other areas we can even see The Return of the test stickers like we saw for ship 20 so they must really want those tiles to be holding well as they again tackle the re-entry heating now speaking of which huge thanks to Ron Parker here for helping us to obtain this tile from Starship flight Test 2 found a while back due to the small size of it I believe this is from the intricate areas such as around the nose or the fins it is still in one piece and based on the glassy texture on this pitted side it certainly seems to have gone through an almost complete re-entry based on how close the ship got to orbital velocity before it was rapidly disassembled based on the other TOS that he has on hand they weren't all damaged in the same way so I suspect that this one had a pretty violent uncontrolled re-entry with the nose at a bizarre angle you would hope that you wouldn't see any damage like this on a tile that re-enters with the correct profile which is of course the ultimate question for flight 4 anyway thank you to Ron for having some of these up on eBay and whatnot I've got links to his YouTube channel in the description where he shares his adventures finding things like this so help him out there with a subscribe if you have a second that would help him out tremendously with his efforts retrieving all sorts of crazy Starship stuff just like it does right here thanks for being here being subscribed so we get to share stuff like that now given the previous week was a little slower with falcon9 action we entered the week with an exciting set of missions to dive into in fact the main thing I missed the week prior was that SpaceX landed a falcon9 booster after a starling commission for their incredible 300th Landing in total even more incredible I think is that they did all of those in under 10 years with most of those being over the last few Falcon 99 has changed the industry and Starship is going to change the entire game so Bravo SpaceX kicking off this week of space launch action we had backto back Falcon 9 launches quickly making up for the quiet week before on Saturday evening this launch rocketed off the pad taking a couple of EA gallileo satellites which are Europe's GPS equivalent into orbit from Cape Canaveral this mission was really the first of its kind too because no other Galileo satellites have been launched from the US before all of the previous 28 Galileo satellites were launched on either a soy or an Aran 5 but now that Aran 5 is retired and many European countries are obviously cutting off most of their ties with Ros Cosmos the European space agency has finally found it necessary to depend on SpaceX for their ride to space that is going to continue for at least a while because they're waiting for the Aran 6 to be ready to fly so the story of this Falcon 9 booster was rather Bittersweet though this was booster 1060 on its 20th flight unfortunately due to the mission requirements SpaceX had to expand this booster to get the satellites to the required medium earth orbit that's the first time in about 2 years that SpaceX needed every bit of propellant in this falcon9 Mission and they simply allowed the booster to reenter the atmosphere uncontrolled to break up you may have also noticed that they stripped off the grid fins and the landing legs to make the Rocket's dry Mass even lower than usual immediately I was seeing people making the assumption that 20 must be the realistic limit of Falcon 9 for reuse but this is isn't so in fact SpaceX mentioned that they are working towards qualifying the fleet of Falcon boosters and fairings to support 40 missions each I will say that flying the Expendable configuration though really makes a gigantic difference when they need that performance just to look at the speed at stage separation 99,999 kmph wow if we compare that to the previous Sterling flight which cuts off at 7,950 that is about 250 kmph faster sadly Isa didn't want to show coverage of the second stage or payload deployment so the stream concluded after the first stage separation less than 24 hours later here we were with the starlink group 654 Mission taking off beside the new crew Tower at space launch complex 40 only early in the evening for this one so it was lit up by the Sun as it roared off into the sky I do really love it when you get an uninterrupted view of the onboard camera during the ascent here this is obviously highly sped up but as the atmosphere thins out the eight outer engine plumes spread out like fiery petals flight number 13 for this booster 1076 and on board the standard batch of 23 styling satellites for the Mega constellation waiting down range for this mission was the Drone ship just read the instructions and another terrific signal right down again highly sped up footage here as we make it through the entry phase and all the way down into the thicker parts of the atmosphere you really do get a great sense of how close the cloud layer really is to the ground as it passes through as the landing burn kicks off typically around 2 and2 km up so at this speed the falcon9 is back on the deck just like that never gets old now while we did need to see booster 1060 discarded after its flight that was not so for booster 1061 taking off on Thursday morning from Vandenberg space force base with the worldview legion 1 and two Mission indeed this one would join the record holder for Landings and due to the satellites being fairly lightweight we had the ultimate in excitement a daylight launch with barely any clouds in sight a return to launch sight spectacle and at stage separation this stubby little Merlin vacuum engine Bell that SpaceX use to save on costs those massive Bells contain super expensive materials and since they are discarded on every flight anyway if SpaceX doesn't need the full performance they can get away with this trimmed down version it just looks whack doesn't it meanwhile we had the terrific uninterrupted camera views of the entry and the landing process you can actually see Landing Zone 4 coming into view well above given the terrific weather and Bam there it is the second booster that has landed 20 times they didn't show the deployment of satellites sadly but we could see them perched up there on top as they ended the stream worldview Legion is a constellation of Earth observation satellites built and operated by maxar these ones on board here are the first two of the planned six satellites to be placed in both polar and mid inclination orbits continuing on with this epic week less than 12 hours later back across the country in Florida the final Falcon 9 of the week was off again from space launch complex 40 it was Flight 19 for this one so close to the record holders on this starlink group 655 Mission I think what Alex from NASA space flight mentioned here was an important Point they've now launched more than 300 times in a row since the Amos 6 mishap and that is quite an incredible run of reliability of course in minutes we were watching the typical glorious touchdown this time on a shortfall of Gravitas now a quick update on NASA's Advanced composite solar s system or acs3 Mission this was launched on the electron on the 24th of April but since then I wanted to know how we were going this week we hadn't heard of any issues so as they say no news is good news and I'm excited about this one because the advanced composite solar sale system aims to test propulsion powered by raw sunlight more on that in a moment but first a big thanks to Hansen shaving supporting today's video the terrific aerospace engineers creating this great Hansen razor have also previously created Aerospace equipment for various applications parts for the ISS one web components and even the exomars Rover since sending me their al13 to try almost 2 years ago I haven't used anything else it's also the perfect gift for Father's Day coming up soon compared to the expensive disposable plastic razors that are dull after just a few uses I love this it is completely plastic free including the packaging and the construction is so precise size that you barely notice the blade is there at all in fact they recently conducted an interesting experiment where individuals shaved one side of their face with the standard multi-blade razor and the other side with the al13 the results were clear showing significantly less irritation from Hansen's razor it isn't just the terrific shave the cost savings over time really add up the three-piece construction will last for decades all made from aluminum and there's also a titanium option too if you appreciate one that's lighter than steel but stronger regardless of which one you pick up all you will need to do when one of the standard double-edged blades needs replacing is unscrew the handle and switch the blade out to be recycled a standard pack of double-edged blades you can pick up from Henson or anywhere else and they work out to be only about 10 cents each comparatively the plastic cartridge razors continually have you paying again and again actually if you want 100 blades for free with your razor which could last you for years head to Henson shaving tocom add the razor in your preferred color along with a pack of 100 blades to your cart simply entering the code markers in the final step of the checkout process and Bam 100 free blades it is as simple as that and you'll have upgraded your shaving experience to Aerospace grade thank you Hansen shaving so yes NASA's acs3 mission is something you really want to keep an eye on indeed this long awaited Mission could bring us a little bit closer to a new era of exploration options just like when navigating the oceans using sails down here acs3 will use its own solar s Tech to navigate through this tiny part of the cosmos using only the tiny force from solar photons soon of course the composite boom will unfur the solar s the size of a small apartment at 9x9 M and this is going to generate the sort of thrust comparable to the weight of a paperclip on Earth but with no fuel needed and a compounding buildup of momentum if we can control the spacecraft as needed you would be amazed at what applications could come from this remember that instruments and equipment on Cube sets can be tiny and lightweight if things go well these exploration Vehicles could be used for space weather early warning satellites near Earth asteroid reconnaissance missions or even communication relays for crude missions of course the further away they are from the Sun the less thrust they can get so certainly most useful for inner solar system missions now speaking of new and exciting technologies that help us explore using only light exciting news from NASA's psyche spacecraft launched last year on board that is the deep space op iCal Communications experiment using laser tech now while saki Ventures towards the asteroid belt it isn't dependent on the laser communication system for primary use but it is set up there as a tech demo and it has just recently been reported that it has transmitted engineering data from over 140 million miles or 225 million kilometers away you may remember last December that NASA sent this video back to Earth with this Laser Technology from about 19 million kilometers away yes this was the video that they used this data was sent at a Max down link of 267 megabits per second that was obviously much closer than this is right now but this latest test though was conducted from 140 million miles away they managed to send the data back at a maximum rate of 25 megabits per second yeah that is still crazy fast I mean I can barely send data from here on my fiber connection that quickly this practically showcases the potential of optical Communications promising lightning fast data transmission rates even over these massive distances that by the way is a rate 10 to 100 times faster than the current Cutting Edge radio communications that we are using in spacecraft today now things are also getting very exciting for Rocket Factory Augsburg who have had their rfa1 rocket first stage arriving in saxford in the UK and they are currently working hard to prepare this for the first Hot Fire campaign this beautiful location is about as far north as you can get in the K they decided to partner up with this commercial Spaceport in Shetland over a year ago now but this is the first time that they've had the rocket arrive to be tested it sure is an absolutely breathtaking spot it's pretty amazing to see it here already given that the team had only just announced finishing the integration of the five Helix engines a few weeks ago now it is here though and it has been lifted up onto the stand now being so far north at a latitude of 60.8 De the speed of the earth rotating beneath you is quite a a lot slower than if you were launching say from Cape canaval the farther north or south you are on the globe the better it is for Polar launchers as just one example that is because to get into a polar orbit you need your rocket to cancel out the momentum that you have from ground level to put this into some perspective at Cape canaval if you are standing at pad 39a you are moving along at about 1,470 km/ hour with the earth now here at the top of the UK it's about 8816 km per hour indeed that is a nice saving over 650 km or 400 mph that means a little more payload capability into the orbit and yeah it all helps so in one of the more bizarre rocket scenes that I've ever seen you sometimes can't beat China can you here we have four of their yf1 100K engines firing at the same time but mounted diagonally blasting out of this crazy building now that would be quite the spicy office space right there so yeah this is a test for their new Long March 12 rocket which should launch for the first time at some point this year that is running off kerosene and liquid oxygen similar I guess to Falcon 9 and this is going to have the capability of putting around 10 tons into low earth orbit the same engines I believe will be used on the much larger Long March 10 which should be able to put seven times that mass into orbit while on the topic of China their shenzu 17 Mission with crew returned to Earth after the Handover to the shenzu 18 crew some really nice helicopter views as it descended down to the surface and the touchdown there with recovery teams and helicopters right there ready to go of course the more breaking news from China is that they've just launched their new moonlander and Sample return Mission Chang A6 just yesterday with the Long March 5 taking it on its ride to space this time China will take on the challenge of retrieving samples from The Far Side of the Moon and return them to earth now there are three main components to the spacecraft the Orbiter the Lander and an Ascent module the Tire mission is going to take about 53 days first being placed into an orbit around the Moon then the Lander and the ascent module will head down to land at the South aen Basin on The Far Side of the Moon once down it will collect about 2 kg of materials launch them on the ascent module back to the Orbiter and that will then return to Earth and release the capsule full of never seen before samples fingers crossed there that they can complete such an epic and complex Mission along with this they even launched a special communication satell light Q2 that will act as a relay between Earth and The Far Side of the Moon so yeah very similar to how they established the communication Network for their Chang a 4 Mission now finally sty Lina's very first crude flight test which could be launching in just a few days is ready to fly hopefully this launch will be taking off on Monday morning from space launch complex 41 NASA of course is providing the coverage of both pre-launch and launch activities where astronauts Butch Wilmore and sun Williams will be heading to the International Space Station while testing everything they can with Boeing's stylon systems after about 8 days they will return home Landing back on the surface in quite a similar way to before this footage was from orbital flight Test 2 landing in the desert of New Mexico of course to prepare for that mission spacex's dragon that had been docked up here for the commercial resupply service 30 Mission needed to get out of the way to free up some space that was undocked almost a week ago in darkness and splashed down early in the week now if you missed this video over here it certainly lit up the comment threads last week if you have a second to help me out check it out right there watch time is just so critical to the channel so even if played again that would be amazing of you thanks as always for being subscribed here loving the content that I make here with the team we appreciate you thanks for watching and I'll catch you for the next one

Channel: Marcus House

Views: 405,572

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Id: f7Hr-4O4N5g

Length: 24min 50sec (1490 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2024