Starship Launching in 9 Days!? But the Wet Dress Rehearsal Needs Repeating...

welcome back to another installment of space this week and there's a lot to discuss about the past week of space flight let me tell you it's likely that the flight 4 wet dress rehearsal that we saw last week wasn't a full success as SpaceX appeared to be readying for another one ahead of flight 4's launch we also saw the first of six dedicated launches of spacex's star Shield satellites for the national reconnaissance office 46 more star link satellites made it to orbit electron conducted the first of two launch for NASA's pre-fire Mission and the UK got one major step closer towards its first vertical rocket launch there was a massive failure during a test of a Starship Raptor engine and during a launch attempt from North Korea all of this and so much more so sit back and enjoy so yes wet dress rehearsal for flight 4 SpaceX conducted this critical pre-launch test on the 20th of May same day as last week's episode of space this week in fact and it seemed to go well if you don't already know a wet dress rehearsal is basically a simulated launch where the rocket and ground systems go through all the steps for a real life launch from loading of real propellant to firing up all the flight Control Systems etc etc doing everything required for launch but ignition itself doesn't happen now last Monday's test did seem to go pretty well the rocket was filled in a staggering just 40 minutes and then everything was DET tanked afterwards with no mention of any shortcut comings on social media however one glaring detail we noticed was a lack of activation of fire X the fire suppression system on the orbital launch Mount and the activation of the water delu system which were both used in the wet dress rehearsal for flight three therefore it was speculated that the test was aborted and that another one would need to take place before flight 4 could go for launch anyway early in the week ship 29 was destacked from booster 11 and placed alongside it Crews were then seen inspecting its heat Shield tiles as well as installing new ones that hadn't yet been attached the fact that the ship wasn't moved back to the production facility for any of this implied that another full stack was expected soon and now that's just happened in the early hours of today ship 29 was restacked on booster 11 some people took this as a sign that SpaceX are now ready for launch especially given the recent tweets from both Elon Musk and SpaceX that launches now very soon but this is not the final stack ship 29 still has not had all of its tiles installed and crucially neither vehicle has had its flight termination system installed this is always the very last thing that gets added prior to a launch so if this stack isn't for launch then what's it for well it's likely to repeat the wet dress rehearsal there are road closures in place from tomorrow the 29th and 30th for a wet dress rehearsal so expect it in the first half of the week and if successful then daack will happen for termination system explosives to be installed restack and then launch right now spacex's official line is that this will be no earlier than the 5th of June so Marky calendars elsewhere in Star base the former suborbital Launchpad site continues to be raised as SpaceX prepares to begin construction of orbitor Launchpad 2 we now have several Tower segments on site ready to go vertical once the groundwork is complete we also saw the continued removal of the defunct vertical gsse tanks remember flight 3 well we have some new insight into how the flight 3 super heavy failed to soft land in the ocean it hit the water at unsurvivable speeds despite an otherwise successful flight SpaceX have now released an official explanation behind this blip following stage separation the booster initiated its 13 engine boost back burn which started well but then six engines prematurely shut down resulting in an incomplete boost back unfortunately those six shutdown engines would have been needed for the final Landing burn which requires the same 13 engines as the Boost back and so there were now only seven engines for the landing burn and only two successfully reached main stage ignition spacex's leading theory for the engine shutdowns is continued filter blockage of the liquid oxygen supply leading to loss of Inlet pressure in the engine turbo pumps this also happened during the flight 2 test so it would seem that this is a recurring problem for super heavy SpaceX have stated that flight fours super heavy has received additional Hardware inside its oxygen tanks to improve propellant filtration and hardware and software changes have been implemented to improve the startup reliability of raptor during Landing one such change to flight for super heavy will be the jettisoning of its hot stage ring which is a separate detachable piece from the main booster I know this means that in this form Starship is no longer a fully reusable vehicle but this will only be a temporary thing while the rocket is still in development I imagine that the hot stage ring will be preserved once we see the block 2 Starships enter testing spacex's report also included the likely rot cause for ship 28's uncontrolled spin during re-entry it was due to clogging of the valves responsible for roll control and that additional roll control thrusters will be added on upcoming Starships to improve attitude control redundancy as well as upgraded Hardware to reduce the risk of blockage in the first place now dun clear if ship 29 will have received any of these Hardware improvements so we just have wait and see how successful its re-entry is once it launches another Starship failure we saw was at the McGregor test site SpaceX conducted a hot fire test of a Raptor engine in the test stand when boom that's a that's a pretty catastrophic failure right there now this could well have been intentional it's pretty common to test space Hardware to the point of failure so that we know the upper limits and can Implement good safety thresholds during operation this may well have been a raptor V3 prot type which SpaceX want to get even more performance out of than the current Raptor 2 either that or something just went very very wrong during this test it's it's impossible to say for sure luckily there were no failures for spacex's enroll 146 Mission this was last Wednesday and saw a falcon 9 launch from a very very foggy Vandenburg carrying 20 star Shield satellites to orbit we think this was a classified Mission and we don't actually know the exact number but astronomer Jonathan mcdowd shared that based on gaps in the catalog 21 catalog numbers were reserved this Mission meaning it carried 21 satellites in total or 20 plus a hardware adapter if required for the star Shield satellites speaking of star Shield very little is known about the satellites themselves they're built by SpaceX with collaboration from northr Grumman and while they are very similar in function to starlink they also have additional functions relating to Target tracking Optical and radio reconnaissance and early missile warning last week's launch was the first of six dedicated launches to build out the star Shield Network which so far has only had a handful of test satellites launched for it this is the first major launch to get it operational star Shield's little brother starlink wasn't neglected last week though across two Falcon 9 Launches on Thursday and Friday SpaceX grew the constellation out by another 46 Starling satellites and both Falcon 9es made successful Landings on their ocean drone ships another cool starlink achievement last week was this this is the very first video call made using direct to sell satellites these phones are communicating by directly connecting to the starlink network without any ground infrastructure at all SpaceX wasn't the only company launching stuff last week rocket lab conducted their Ready Aim pre-fire launch on Saturday the electron rocket carried the first of two satellites for NASA's pre-fire mission to a 525 km circular Earth Earth orbit pre-fire stands for Polar radiant energy in the far infrared experiment and the two satellites will work together to measure a little studied portion of the radiant energy emitted by Earth for clues about sea ice loss ice sheet melting and the warming of the Arctic the satellites will crisscross over the Arctic and Antarctic measuring thermal infrared radiation the launch date of the second mission named pre-fire and ice will take place within around 3 weeks North Korea had a go at launching something last week with slightly less successful results the launch was earlier today actually and was North Korea's cha one vehicle carrying a spy satellite on board this footage was filmed by the Japanese broadcasting network and appears to show what looks like an initially successful launch with the rocket then veering off course probably due to an engine failure followed by failure of the fuselage and subsequent rud and given that it's North Korea that's about all we'll probably ever know about this launch Asia did see a successful launch from China though last Tuesday aisu 11 carried four satellites to low earth orbit the main payload was the Wuhan one satellite an earth observation satellite built by Wuhan University and three smaller payloads described as being ultra low orbit technology experimental satellites this was only the second successful launch of the quiso 11 a rocket developed by xpace technology corporation which is a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation now as a dweller of the British Isles it's always bothered me that we are the only nation to successfully develop an orbital class rocket only to then completely discontinue operating any orbital rocket ever again the only way to see The Black Arrow now is in a museum here's me visiting said Museum and you know while this is very impressive I'd much rather see it Fly well that ain't going to happen but rocket Factory orgb BG's rfa1 will now obviously that's not a British rocket but it will launch on the British Isles namely Shetland at the sax ofo Space Center we've never actually had a vertical orbital rocket launch in the UK before so this is very exciting for me and just 5 weeks after its arrival RFA has completed its first hot fire of its first stage with four Helix engines captured here in this official video of the spectacular scene all the best of luck to Rocket Factory to get this thing launching I am definitely going to have to make the trip up to Shetland at some point to watch this and hopefully capture some footage to show you all in space this week so you know hit subscribe so you don't miss that one now the fate of ksp2 continues to look Bleak as the communications black out from Take 2 interactive continues and so last Saturday L Aerospace was back in business in Kerbal Space Program one and given that I used to build a lot of sstos in that game I figured the best way to return to form in the now only Kerbal game in my eyes would be to do just that I really like how the vehicle ended up looking actually so if you haven't seen the video yet do check it out it should now be one of the onscreen cards also if you enjoy my content and want to help support it then I do have a patreon and YouTube member page that you can join just like the beautiful people on the left did but that's all for me today I really hope you enjoy today's episode of space this week and I will catch you in the next video which will be on Saturday I don't know what it's going to be yet but it it'll be

Channel: Matt Lowne

Views: 33,133

Keywords: wet dress rehearsal, starship flight 4, flight 4, fourth flight, forth flight, cholima 1, rocket lab, rocket factory augsberg, Rocket Factory Augsburg, boca chica, booster, elon musk, flight test, matt lowne space news, matt lowne space this week, mechazilla, nasa, rocket launch, space this week, spacenews, spacex, spacex starship, starbase, starbase boca chica, starship, starship flight test, starship orbital flight test, static fire, united launch alliance

Id: AdyA42UTNp8

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Mon May 27 2024