Musical Interlude topic for September 2024

In the last couple of weeks we saw SpaceX lose its oldest booster, get grounded, return to flight and still not launch Polaris Dawn.
Blue Origin Misses Its Mars Launch
- SpaceX Gets Grounded (For 3 days) - Deep Space Updates | 20:16
Scott Manley | 1.7M subscribers | 170,916 views | September 6, 2024

Transcript
0:04 · hello it's Scott Manley here it's
0:06 · September 6th I've had another flying
0:08 · lesson but it is time for another batch
0:10 · of deep space updates and we start by
0:12 · rewinding to go over all the launches
0:14 · which started out kind of slowly back in
0:17 · 22nd of August we had a long march 7A
0:20 · launching China sat 4A into G stationary
0:23 · Earth orbit out of Wang Chang uh this is
0:25 · actually the second launch of a China
0:28 · sat satellite in the last few months
0:29 · where W back in June uh now the next
0:32 · thing that we expected to happen was
0:34 · Polaris Dawn but it was ready to go and
0:36 · then they had to delay they took the
0:38 · rocket down and they basically delayed
0:40 · the launch due to helium system issues
0:43 · and then there was weather delays in
0:45 · Polaris so SpaceX set up a couple of
0:48 · starlink launches and on 28th of August
0:50 · they flew starlink uh group
0:53 · 86 on booster 1062 their life leader 23
0:57 · launches it successfully put starlink
1:00 · into orbit and then as it returned to
1:02 · the Drone ship a shortfall of Gravitas
1:05 · it turned out there was a little more
1:06 · gravitas than it expected on one of the
1:09 · legs and the rocket has fallen over and
1:12 · destroyed itself now that led to a
1:15 · temporary grounding of all SpaceX
1:17 · Rockets there there's a chance for other
1:20 · you know space launch providers to
1:23 · really Corner the market right so yeah
1:25 · on the 29th of August we had a series 1s
1:29 · launched by Galactic energy its mission
1:31 · was called how far I'll go it's also it
1:34 · launched its payload or sorry launched
1:37 · from a facility called The Don Fang Hang
1:39 · tiang Gang which is also known as their
1:42 · sea platform in the Yellow Sea this
1:44 · launched their payload into a low earth
1:46 · sun synchronous orbit and I believe that
1:49 · there's three Yan Yao 1 meteorology
1:52 · satellites and some other satellites
1:55 · involved uh so it was a total of six
1:58 · satellites and then yes two three days
2:01 · later after uh the SpaceX temporary
2:03 · grounding Falcon 9 returned to flight
2:05 · after all it was only a booster failure
2:07 · so sorry it was only a landing failure
2:09 · it didn't really represent much Hazard
2:12 · so yes starlink launch group 8-10
2:16 · launched out a Cape Canaveral you know
2:18 · slick 40 21 satellites and that was very
2:22 · quickly followed by a falcon9 launching
2:24 · starlink group 9-5 out of vanderberg
2:28 · space Force Base so back in the game but
2:31 · we still haven't had a proper report on
2:33 · what happened to booster
2:35 · 1062 um third of September Long March 4B
2:39 · launching yagan uh six reconnaissance
2:42 · satellites into you know low earth orbit
2:44 · that's pretty common uh China um launch
2:48 · 5th of September we had the final launch
2:51 · of the stock Vega now the Vega sea is
2:54 · going to continue to fly but this was
2:55 · the original Vega and it launched the
2:57 · Sentinal 2ca Earth observation satellite
3:00 · out of Karu in South America now this
3:04 · was a delayed launch because originally
3:06 · the final stage for this the fuel tanks
3:09 · had been lost and then were later
3:11 · located in a landfill after having been
3:14 · crushed so they needed to come up with a
3:16 · solution the solution they used was to
3:18 · get the slightly larger tanks from the
3:20 · Vega sea and build a new stage around
3:23 · those so this is this was a oneoff Vega
3:27 · with Vega SE tankage on the upper stage
3:31 · so uh but this ultimately worked out
3:33 · Central 2C is in Orbit and Vega C is
3:35 · going to be the rocket going forward so
3:37 · now Europe uh well it's lost a launcher
3:41 · but uh Vega C is coming back soon 5th of
3:44 · September we had the fal 9 launching
3:46 · starlink out of Cape canaval group 8-10
3:50 · 21 satellites in that batch and over in
3:53 · China on the fifth we had a long march
3:55 · six carrying 10 Gat 3 uh and so this is
3:59 · a Mobility Communications constellation
4:02 · for Chinese automaker gilee uh so
4:05 · they've launched 30 of these satellites
4:06 · although it's interesting that this is
4:07 · on a Long March 6 whereas the other ones
4:09 · are long launched on Long March
4:12 · 2C uh the 6th of September finally last
4:15 · night Falcon 9 launched
4:17 · nr13 star Shield you know 21 star Shield
4:20 · satellites that's built with North or
4:22 · Grumman uh and that was successful but
4:25 · it wasn't as spectacular as I hoped even
4:27 · after having set up my cameras now in
4:29 · the last couple of weeks we also had a
4:31 · suborbital launch of uh blue origins new
4:34 · Shepherd NS 26 it was the first flight
4:36 · since the parachute issue back in May uh
4:40 · they took six people including a NASA
4:42 · researcher uh Rob furl from the
4:45 · University of Florida who conducted
4:47 · experiments on gene expression during
4:49 · different uh you know phases of the
4:51 · flight we also had Carston kitchen who I
4:54 · think her dad paid for her to fly and
4:56 · she's like a student in North Carolina
4:58 · and therefore apparently the youngest
5:00 · woman to fly over this Carmen line uh
5:03 · there's uh I Iman young here who's like
5:07 · who was paid to fly by the moon da the
5:11 · cryptocurrency people if you remember I
5:13 · think that was the same person that bid
5:14 · $28 millionar or something ridiculous to
5:17 · fly in the very first new Shepherd and
5:19 · then you've got n nicolina elich eugina
5:21 · gin Ephraim Rabin and we are still
5:25 · waiting on the big actual tourist space
5:28 · flight Polaris da the weather just has
5:31 · not worked and at this point given that
5:34 · it's a 5-day Mission and they haven't
5:36 · announced their launching there's a
5:37 · pretty good chance they might overlap
5:39 · with suu's ms26 which is launching uh in
5:43 · a week or so anyway also relevant I
5:45 · guess is that a shortfall of Gravitas
5:47 · came back to Port carrying the remains
5:49 · of booster 1062 and as you know amateur
5:53 · space accident investigators tried to
5:55 · see if we could figure out any new Clues
5:57 · from the wreckage but a lot of it was
5:59 · covered up in tarps you know because of
6:00 · eye tarp which I guess makes those eye
6:03 · tarps um but yeah the the legs were you
6:06 · know SPL out in various places that it
6:08 · was very there was broken stuff it was
6:10 · hard to tell what broke before or after
6:13 · things followed but it is very cool to
6:14 · see like the rocket fell in One
6:16 · Direction and then there are like copv
6:19 · helium bottles are over the other side
6:21 · of the ship that clearly had to Rocket
6:23 · there uh yes Rockets after landing
6:26 · anyway yeah it's like I'm going to get
6:28 · the heck out of this falling rocket so
6:32 · as I explained in my other video about
6:34 · Starliner the crew are now going to be
6:36 · returning on spacex's crew 9 and that
6:39 · means that uh crew 9 which is going to
6:41 · launch later this month is only going to
6:43 · launch with a crew of two instead of a
6:45 · crew of four and as I predicted Nick ha
6:48 · will be the commander and Alexander
6:50 · gorinov from MOS Cosmos will will fly
6:53 · because you have to have the Russian guy
6:55 · because that's a deal with Ros Cosmos
6:57 · and since the other uh us crew members
7:00 · on crew 9 had no ISS experience they had
7:04 · to put Nick Hag on there that meant that
7:06 · mission Commander Zena Cardman is being
7:09 · bumped to a later flight which is
7:11 · unfortunate so yeah there that's
7:13 · spacecraft is going to undock today it's
7:15 · going to land in White Sands it'll maybe
7:17 · be visible flying over Mexico if you are
7:20 · along the The Descent path so take a
7:22 · look for that uh tomorrow night tonight
7:25 · yeah it's soon it'll be a great show uh
7:29 · Starlight also had an interesting moment
7:31 · where um Butch was hearing some strange
7:34 · sounds he and he communicated down about
7:37 · he played these sounds back he described
7:39 · them as sounding like
7:45 · sonar uh and this this was great news
7:48 · fod you know what if Starliner isn't
7:50 · just failing due to tefla and seals what
7:52 · if it's haunted but no it was just a
7:55 · Communications configuration that
7:57 · because the way you know stuff was
7:58 · rooted there was a feedback loop in
8:00 · there with a bit of a delay and that me
8:02 · sounds would be Amplified and you would
8:04 · create these rhythmic pings it was
8:06 · basically like a delay effect on any
8:08 · audio okay over in China we know that
8:12 · Chinese space plane uh landed we don't
8:15 · know anything more about it we still
8:17 · don't have any proper pictures of it but
8:20 · we're pretty sure that it must have
8:21 · landed at the lobner air base uh because
8:25 · previous ones have landed there and
8:27 · that's where the orbit was passing over
8:28 · roughly about the time when uh they
8:30 · talked about the return so that's 267
8:33 · days in orbit and still a complete
8:36 · mystery over in Europe in Norway the
8:40 · andoya Spaceport has received a license
8:43 · from Norway's M Ministry of trade and
8:45 · everything to that will allow it to con
8:48 · uh conduct orbital launches from the
8:50 · site so this is like Way North up in the
8:52 · Arctic Circle and it will be the launch
8:55 · site for the German company isar
8:58 · Aerospace which is building a rocket
9:00 · called the Spectrum launch vehicle I
9:02 · don't know much more about this there is
9:04 · another rocket company in Germany rocket
9:06 · Factory alburg and of course they had a
9:08 · somewhat spectacular failure of their
9:10 · booster at sax oford Spaceport in
9:13 · Shetland Islands north of Scotland uh
9:15 · and we got some footage of that last
9:17 · time but now we actually have a few more
9:19 · details that there was a turbo pump
9:21 · failure that turned into an oxygen fire
9:24 · that is where metal is burning in oxygen
9:27 · the shutdown did not go as pln and
9:29 · ultimately the booster was consumed by
9:32 · the fire and uh you know they're going
9:34 · to have to rebuild that whole thing NASA
9:37 · has added three new providers to its
9:39 · evader program that's a venture class
9:41 · acquisition of our dedicated and ride
9:44 · share possibilities so this is a bit
9:46 · like NASA's launch Services Program
9:48 · where they match their satellites up
9:49 · with launch providers but this is
9:51 · supposed to be the lower cost higher
9:53 · risk version so the three new providers
9:55 · that have been added are Aerospace uh
9:58 · impulse space and momentus space and you
10:01 · know impulse and momentus they build
10:03 · these on orbit tugs which will launch
10:05 · typically on a falcon 9 ride share and
10:07 · then deploy Hardware to other orbits and
10:10 · you know so this is this is just new
10:13 · possibilities a lot of the other launch
10:14 · providers by the way were actually
10:16 · launch providers and many of them are no
10:18 · longer in is in business but uh yeah
10:21 · Vader has been used for things like the
10:23 · tropics Mission which launched on Rocket
10:25 · Labs electron successfully and uh there
10:28 · was also Al used for the pre-fire
10:30 · mission again you launched on a rocket
10:32 · lab vehicle and uh blue origin is going
10:36 · to launch the Escapade Mission to Mars
10:39 · on on their uh you new Glenn rocket and
10:43 · literally while I was recording this
10:45 · video NASA put out an announcement
10:47 · saying that the new Glenn launch of
10:50 · Escapade is being delayed by 6 months
10:52 · until spring of
10:54 · 2025 uh blue origin instead is going to
10:57 · launch a blue ring spacecraft
10:59 · demonstrate the rocket and uh presumably
11:02 · because they have such excess
11:04 · performance for a rocket this big and
11:06 · spacecraft that small that allows them
11:08 · to hit launch Windows that other Rockets
11:09 · might not be capable but it does
11:11 · demonstrate there is a significant risk
11:13 · of being the first payload on a new
11:15 · rocket and yeah uh Tim Dodd also posted
11:19 · his second part of his Rock rocket
11:21 · factory tour with Jeff Bezos and I'm
11:22 · going to say Jeff looks great you know
11:24 · um I think it was a great decision for
11:26 · him to like stop that whole Amazon thing
11:28 · and get deep into Rockets because you
11:30 · know customers complain all the time and
11:32 · you can never satisfy them but the laws
11:34 · of physics you know exactly what you
11:35 · have to do to make them happy uh Firefly
11:39 · they have uh got their blue Ghost Lander
11:42 · in The Test Facilities the vacuum
11:45 · accoustic vibration thermal stuff uh
11:48 · over at GPL they're making sure this
11:51 · rock this vehicle is safe for flying on
11:54 · the Falcon booster to the moon and
11:57 · hopefully Landing in addition to this of
11:59 · course they've done a bunch of other
12:01 · tests at their facilities in Texas
12:03 · they've been flying like drones with
12:05 · navigation Suites and sensors on board
12:08 · over like a simulated lunar landscape uh
12:11 · you know they've performed simulated
12:13 · Landing tests so that's hopefully going
12:15 · to launch later this year and also we
12:18 · got a report from astrobotic on what
12:21 · happened to the paragen spacecraft and
12:24 · the explanation is it was a failure in a
12:27 · pressure control valve that stopped
12:29 · sealing properly and it stopped sealing
12:32 · they think due to vibration induced
12:35 · relaxation of threaded components that
12:37 · is they had you know threads like things
12:39 · that were screwed into each other and
12:41 · vibration caused them to slightly
12:44 · unscrew to the point that the valve was
12:45 · no longer sealing and that meant that
12:47 · the helium regulator stop wouldn't stop
12:50 · the flow of helium to pressurize the
12:51 · tanks and eventually the tanks over
12:54 · pressurized and they were left without a
12:56 · propulsion system was operating you know
12:59 · the the levels needed to land on the
13:01 · moon so presumably they're going to
13:03 · redesign the valve in some way I'm not
13:06 · sure how because valves are complicated
13:08 · and you know complex and they're always
13:12 · responsible for things going wrong
13:14 · valves we love them but we hate them we
13:18 · hate them but we can't live without them
13:20 · Al Space Systems announced at the end of
13:22 · August that they are having to let go of
13:24 · a bunch of their staff they're
13:25 · downsizing uh and I'm not I don't have
13:28 · an exact number on this but according to
13:30 · some sources which I cannot verify the
13:32 · veracity of it could be as much as half
13:34 · of their staff and this is unfortunate
13:36 · back in July they were having a static
13:39 · test of one of their boosters and it
13:41 · failed and they lost that booster um and
13:43 · so we did actually get details on what
13:46 · went wrong or a few more details that is
13:48 · going to be a full 11 engine test and
13:50 · they actually shut down the test early
13:52 · because engine number 10 was showing uh
13:56 · like dubious pressure readings and that
13:57 · was apparently a bad sense
13:59 · but then a fire started fed by fuel
14:02 · leaking from engine 5 and 8 the fire
14:05 · suppression system kicks in and they're
14:07 · just like containing the fire but
14:09 · they're unable to put it out and
14:10 · eventually the test stand Runs Out of
14:13 · Water because they didn't have a water
14:15 · pipe to it they just had a big water
14:17 · tank and so the fire runs out of control
14:19 · and eventually destroys the booster now
14:22 · the engines 5 and8 they apparently
14:24 · leaked because there was significant
14:26 · erosion of the injectors on those
14:29 · engines and that was consistent with uh
14:32 · uh combustion instability induced
14:34 · failure so this is quite a complicated
14:36 · failure they may have to come and re go
14:38 · do some engine redesign and we have
14:41 · another detailed report from the NASA
14:44 · office of Inspector General about how
14:46 · SLS is costing too much and taking too
14:49 · long this time it is about the second
14:52 · mobile launch Tower which is being
14:54 · designed and built by beol and uh so
14:58 · this of course is is the second tower
15:00 · the first one is needed to launch the
15:01 · Baseline SLS which uses the interim
15:04 · cryogenic propulsion stage and they
15:07 · going to be transitioning to the
15:08 · exploration upper stage which is taller
15:10 · so they needed a bigger Tower and back
15:13 · when this was being planned they thought
15:14 · the SLS would be launching so fast that
15:18 · they wouldn't have time to have you know
15:20 · convert one Tower into the other oh how
15:24 · preent they weren't uh so yeah this
15:27 · tower has to be built in parallel and it
15:30 · was supposed to be like less than a
15:31 · billion dollars which seems ridiculous
15:33 · it's now looking that it might cost as
15:35 · much as $2.9 billion this is one of
15:37 · those Cost Plus contracts where the cost
15:40 · estimates um you know be will stand to
15:43 · make a certain amount of money
15:45 · regardless of how much money this thing
15:47 · uh you know it costs and they're
15:50 · fronting the cost of all this look um
15:53 · now NASA of course and Beck are saying
15:56 · no no no no you're just taking a a
15:58 · linear approximation this is not going
16:00 · to it's not going to cost nearly 2.9
16:02 · bill it's only going to cost 2.6 billion
16:04 · that'll only be 1.6 billion more than we
16:07 · expected a tower a steel Tower to launch
16:10 · uh yeah go and read these reports it
16:15 · just and the problem isn't that they're
16:17 · spending a lot of money the problem is
16:19 · really that they're taking all this
16:20 · money from other things that are doing
16:22 · better things with the money they get um
16:27 · okay speaking of launch facilities
16:29 · Evolution space and the space Sports
16:31 · company performed a test launch of a
16:33 · sounding rocket from a ship in the Gulf
16:35 · of Mexico now the spaceports company
16:37 · their whole thing is to have these like
16:39 · Jack platforms that can set up just off
16:42 · the course anchor themselves and launch
16:44 · rockets because they argue that launch
16:46 · facilities are a limiting factor in the
16:48 · US which has lots of populated areas uh
16:52 · Evolution space they're building small
16:54 · sounding rockets and hoping to scale up
16:56 · uh they actually are hoping to build
16:58 · solid rockets for the US military so I
17:00 · think this was like a sort of
17:02 · collaboration for their various
17:04 · contracts to try and you know move
17:06 · forward with that but it's very cool to
17:08 · see a launch from a ship in the US and
17:12 · speaking of ships blue origin have
17:14 · unveiled their Landing ship it finally
17:17 · sailed into town and it's about the same
17:19 · size as the SpaceX ones although the uh
17:23 · facilities at either end of the barge
17:24 · are built up a little higher but it's
17:26 · about the same width because if you
17:27 · think about it it has to move through
17:28 · through like the Panama Canal if it's
17:30 · ever going to get to the West Coast so
17:33 · uh this one is named Jacqueline after
17:37 · Jeff bezos's M and I think that's a
17:38 · fantastic sentiment but Jeff you do
17:41 · realize that this thing is supposed to
17:44 · catch large rockets and Rockets are
17:47 · shaped like a certain piece of human
17:50 · anatomy and I'm not sure you want the
17:51 · vision of your mom catching these to be
17:55 · never mind I'm sorry I just that's
17:57 · that's why my mind wet right right but
17:59 · yeah uh they're they've got their second
18:02 · stage now out in a test stand they're
18:04 · hoping to do like a some testing and
18:06 · verify with the be uh 3 engines which
18:09 · were of course hydrogen engines needed
18:11 · for the upper stage um over at Mercury
18:16 · bee Columbo flew past the planet in
18:18 · another gravity assist and this one is
18:21 · different from the original plan because
18:23 · earlier this year bee Columbo began to
18:25 · develop issues with its ion thruster
18:28 · propuls system and that meant it was
18:30 · only getting about 90% of the
18:32 · performance it needed which means they
18:34 · have to redesign the trajectory so they
18:37 · move this particular pass a little
18:38 · closer to the uh moon or to the planet
18:42 · and it's going to come around it's going
18:43 · to take another 11 months to get to
18:45 · Mercury but you know we did get a cool
18:48 · fly past and I think this is actually be
18:50 · closer than it will ever get in the
18:52 · mission now unfortunately it didn't have
18:54 · the full scientific camera system
18:56 · available because that's blocked by the
18:58 · propulsion unit that detaches once it
19:00 · gets there but we do get some great
19:02 · footage or shots from the engineering
19:04 · cameras showing Mercury up close um and
19:09 · if you want to see a bit of space up
19:11 · close well a bit of space came to us
19:14 · this week an asteroid 2024
19:18 · rw1 was found just before impact by the
19:21 · Catalina Sky survey in Tucson Arizona
19:24 · this is only the ninth asteroid to have
19:26 · been discovered before it impacts to the
19:29 · Earth uh yeah so we got this predicted
19:32 · and sure enough plenty of people managed
19:33 · to get images of this descending over
19:35 · the Philippines and so with that the
19:39 · next thing we're going to watch for
19:40 · falling back to Earth will be Starliner
19:43 · and we'll get to find out whether it
19:45 · truly was a gamble that should have been
19:47 · taken or whether whether crew n will
19:51 · actually have saved the day I don't know
19:53 · but this is going to happen I'm Scott
19:55 · Manley fly safe
20:02 · [Music]
20:11 · [Music]

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