Transcript
Well, we may still have a Starship floating around in the Indian Ocean, but back on land things are moving at a breakneck pace as Flight 14 gets ever closer. Yes, the preparations for that first-ever Ship catch are becoming increasingly obvious, and we even have huge news in Florida with questions finally answered that we have been asking for years. Somehow, that’s only the beginning of another completely packed week with this rocket looking like it has come right from one of my early Kerbal Space Program designs! Ouch! We have NASA dropping loads about their magnetoplasmadynamic engine tests, a breathtaking total solar eclipse, and Rocket Lab are going portable!? Indeed, we have all that and more this week! Hey, hey, Marcus House with you here and as far as we know Ship 40 is still out there three weeks after splashing down after Starship Flight 13.
The team SpaceX had out there trying to recover it on board the vessel NORMAND RANGER were still attached mid-week and thanks to the tracking information on the vessel, the behavior seemed pretty consistent with an effort to tow the beast. The thing is, they weren’t getting closer to Australia, instead heading more northward. They seemed to be fighting the wind and current, but not looking like they could fight it enough to make any real progress. We suspect this had all been simply a stabilization effort to this point due to that poor weather. If they were able to get underway we would have a better idea what the tow speed would be as it moved toward the destination port there. I mean, as we learned a week ago, the recovery of Ship 40 was not looking good. The weather should have been improving later in the week out there though, but at this point, I guess no news is... well, okay news.
Looking at the position of the vessels on Friday evening, NORMAND RANGER had left Ship 40, made its way further north to Christmas Island, presumably to be resupplied, while Go Australis, which had returned to help with Starship recovery earlier in the week, seems to be staying here to watch over Ship 40. Do you think they’ll get it back? Let me know in the comments.
So with that recovery effort, many have asked me why SpaceX is even bothering at this point. If it takes a month to get it back, SpaceX may even have a flown ship return home to be caught out of the sky by then. Flight 14, in terms of its predicted flight timeline, still looks to be at the end of this month, but with only a little over two weeks remaining now, we sure haven’t seen the activity that would be consistent with this epic mission happening that quickly. For that timeline to hold, I would expect that we would at least have had Ship 41 out for static fire already, if not the super heavy as well, but we have not seen either vehicle roll for that fiery testing this week. If things move fast, it could perhaps be possible, but it is looking like September to us at this point.
One of the things that’s causing the few delays I suspect is from the Pad 2 side. We can see that down inside the flame trench they are still busy welding new burn plates into the corners, thanks to these views from RGV Aerial Photography. Given they are likely wanting the super heavy out for static fire as soon as possible, I can’t imagine this work is going to take too much longer to polish off.
Along with that, in an effort to help speed up the pad refurbishment timeline though, this week we saw the delivery of some particularly odd-looking pieces and the awesome Chromekiwi was quickly able to piece this together. The thought is that once both pieces are fitted together, this jig is going to be used as a service platform for the new launch mount design. This is sort of a similar idea to what was used at Pad 1, which already feels so long ago! This new jig though, as far as we can tell, will only be used to service the launch mount itself, not a super heavy booster that sits above. I say this because it looks like it is to be lifted in and out of the mount from above and not lifted from underneath. It also looks to take up the space where the super heavy’s engines would otherwise sit rather than being a little further below.
So, why would they be doing this though? Well, if you haven’t noticed already, they have had to install this absolute jungle of scaffolding in and around the launch mount after both Flight 12 and 13 just to do proper inspections. This is a critical task, of course, because they need to make sure the pad design is holding up as expected, but this scaffolding prep work takes time and I’m sure that it’s currently quite frustrating. Well, hopefully not for much longer with this new jig!
Now, moving up this tower, you may have noticed the scaffolding which was installed over the last few weeks, but it wasn’t too clear why it was all there to begin with. Now that it is coming back down, we can see exactly why! These additional tabs along the corners are the first signs that more cladding is about to be installed, and it appears that they intend to have it cover all the way up to at least the ship quick disconnect. We suspect this is all in preparation for the upcoming ship catch attempt. SpaceX would be wanting to make sure any of that Raptor engine exhaust doesn’t blast into the tower area and cause damage.
Okay, so heading over to Pad 1 that is rapidly being upgraded, there’s something new to talk about over here every week. The biggest thing which may stand out today is the drawworks bunker which has absolutely flown up! It is exciting to finally see parts going together again instead of being removed! Alongside, we have obviously been watching the trench walls being preassembled. Now we have seen them adding on the sloped edges for the flame trench. There should be four of these once complete. Down inside the trench, by the way, rebar is beginning to be laid down at the bottom for the giant cages. These will support all the embeds for the flame trench and the trench walls.
Moving over into the tank farm, this week we saw them deliver two more cryogenic storage tanks to the launch site which took up the two pedestals on the right. There should be just four more tanks remaining before this side of the launch site is packed full! Any extensions after this point will presumably go south into the new site expansion. Well, we already see SpaceX beginning work in this area which we suspect is for that!
Now, it has been quite some time since we’ve talked about the Air Separation Unit across the road, but we can now see SpaceX beginning to assemble this brand new building. This looks to be part of a cooling tower for all the electrical systems involved in the air separation process. I can wait to see this development finalized because it should mean SpaceX can obtain all that liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen right from this point without any trucks needing to roll in for that supply.
Now, over in Florida, we of course have another two launch sites with three more Starship launch pads getting constructed. Because they don’t have their own Starfactory here yet, the supply of Starships to launch initially will depend on Starbase in Texas! The launch tower at Launch Complex 39A though will be the first to be operational here and it is very nearly complete! In fact, the tower arms were being tested this week with the iconic water bags finally making that appearance! SpaceX fills these bags with hundreds of tonnes of water while they’re being suspended from both arms. They then run a series of tests to make sure they can support the weight of a vehicle being lifted and lowered, but also that a vehicle coming in to be caught will have the needed margins. If you think about the worst-case scenario, they want to make sure that even if a massive Super Heavy booster comes in with a little excess speed, the arms can take a bit of extra punishment.
In the first test here, they filled the bags at the bottom of the tower before they then did a full translation up, over to the center, down to the ship quick disconnect, and then back over and down. The next few tests were done using the arms at the very top of the tower. In this case, suspended the water bags from super long steel cables at the bottom. We saw SpaceX do this at Pad 2 in Starbase as well, and we believe this test is more about checking how well the tower itself flexes and bends with that much weight attached to the side!
Now thanks to Harry Stranger and Planet Labs organizing some fresh views from above, we have some updated shots of the various launch sites across the space coast. There’s lots of amazing details here so do give Harry a follow, especially if you are also into exploring historic declassified spy satellite images. Right here though we are more interested in the second and even bigger Starship launch site, Space Launch Complex 37. We can see here they are beginning to install those deluge tanks onto their platforms and the pedestals for the cryogenic storage tanks are constructed and waiting for them to arrive! Right up through the site here though you will notice the long run of conduit which will provide the Pad 37A launch mount with all the data and power that it needs. You may also notice that the tower is fully stacked now, which was confirmed with an image by SpaceX’s vice president of launch!
That is not all either because check this out. Concrete piles for the Pad 37B foundation are now visible! This ring of piles here is for the staging pad just below where the tower arms would be. Starship vehicles will be lifted and lowered from this spot, so this is very cool to already see. There are also piles over here for where the commodities bunker will rise up. So, yeah, just to give you an idea of what this pad will likely end up looking like, here is 37A’s current progress placed right over! Both pads, at least for the time being, look to be sharing a tank farm and a water deluge supply. It really is quite incredible that despite not having done the first operational mission to orbit with Starship, we have more launch pads under construction right now than Falcon 9 has EVER had! Once SpaceX is all set up, the launch frequency is going to be something out of this world, quite literally!
Now to top it all off for Florida updates, we are finally seeing permits for a development northwest of SpaceX’s existing Roberts Road facility. This is one large part of the puzzle you have had many questions about for years at this point, and we’ve often wondered ourselves where SpaceX is going to do upper stage Starship static fires here. Well, question that no more because finally we have Project Ignition! This is where they intend to do all that testing, similar to what we see at Massey’s! Unlike Massey’s, though, it won’t have the extra test stands for test tanks because the research and development part of Starship should remain in Starbase. Instead, they seem to be filling this space with two Starship static fire stands, with each looking to have their own set of redundant systems in between! In front of these stands, what appears to be an open concrete pad with a deluge water collection pit at the end! So, yea, SpaceX is just smashing the work out around the sites even while they try to recover Ship 40 floating out here since the thirteenth flight test.
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Ok, we still have another chunk of Falcon 9 launches this week but also Starlink updates. First of all, Group 17-38 was away from Vandenberg Space Force Base a few hours after my video went live last Saturday morning. It was another foggy one there with booster 1093 launching out of that thick cover on its 16th flight as it pushed this batch of 24 Starlinks out of the atmosphere. Of Course I Still Love You was downrange for the catch with this one. And then we had Group 10-19 away from Space Launch Complex 40 on Tuesday morning. It was a comparatively clear and beautiful launch this one. Nice onboard views too as we watch Cape Canaveral shrink behind there as Booster 1085 made its way to stage separation for the 18th time. Remember, SpaceX now only has the two droneships for Falcon 9 missions these days, so it was A Shortfall of Gravitas awaiting the booster to once more touch down on the deck. Some sweet views from that camera. They were really going for it this week because less than 13 hours later the next was away back in Vandenberg on Tuesday evening with Group 17-49. Only a very young booster 1103 this time, and Of Course I Still Love You catching this one had already done the full round trip to be back again in under four days. They don’t mess around.
Now, if you have been watching all the group numbers lately, you would realize that we’ve just been watching SpaceX place groups 10 and 17 sets into orbit primarily, and right now SpaceX are coming up to having 11,000 Starlinks in orbit in total. I suspect after we see them finalize those groups for 10 and 17, that may be about it for Falcon 9 Starlink missions. At this point, Starship missions to send the much more capable and larger Version 3 Starlink satellites will change the game entirely. As was mentioned in the earnings call last week, the Version 3 satellites have about 10 times more capability, which should mean roughly 10 times the revenue that can be earned from one single unit. Gwynne Shotwell even mentioned in that call that Quarter 2 this year was their best yet for Starlink, with the customer base growing by more than 1.7 million subscriptions, beating their previous best of 1.4 million. What SpaceX really wants to see by the end of Quarter 2 next year is about 1,000 Version 3 Starlink satellites to have been deployed by Starship, so I guess they are hoping for about 25 launches between now and then? Yea, they are certainly going to need to get into gear because if we are not seeing a launch every two weeks on average between now and then, they won’t make it.
Of course, during the earnings call, they also talked a bunch about the Starmind satellite network. They will be making these AI satellites using exclusive tech from NVIDIA for now at least, but they want these to be launching by sometime in 2027 as well. I can’t wait to see what sort of orbits these are going to be placed into because without orbital refilling, Starship will only be able to get them so high. Perhaps each unit will then over time extend their orbits right out. I mean, if these are loads higher, which we certainly expect them to be, they are not going to need anywhere near the propellant to just keep fighting drag. I’d also love to see what happens to these once they are at the end of their life. Perhaps they have the propellant left to come right back down, be loaded into a Starship, and recycled entirely, but it is of course all very speculative until we get some official information.
Now, we had some unfortunate news from China, as early in the week there was a pretty wild rocket failure. On Monday evening, a Long March 7A lifted off carrying a classified payload, and due to the confidential nature of the mission, there wasn’t any sort of broadcast. From the ground, though, everything looked fine at first, right until the rocket was close to the maximum dynamic pressure point or MaxQ. Essentially, the point where the aerodynamic stress on the vehicle reaches the highest level. At about 1 minute and 20 seconds into the flight, the rocket suddenly exploded. And these views captured by people on the ground were soon all over social media. There was speculation at first that it could have been a failure of the YF-100 rocket engine, which is one of China’s most widely used. If that turned out to be true, that would have some pretty serious repercussions because the same engine family powers a huge portion of China’s launch vehicles, including the Long March 5, 7, and 8. Of course, afterward this video surfaced which added some much better evidence to the situation. Indeed, much like some of my earlier Kerbal Space Program rockets, this clearly shows the top end of the rocket bend over and breaking apart, smashing right into the first stage. This we can likely assume also triggered the flight termination system, leading to the rapid demise of the entire vehicle. Looking at this even more closely, it looks like the vehicle gave way right around the point where the second stage joins the third. That’s pretty weird considering they’ve already launched three of these rockets this year alone. Anyway, I’m not sure if they had disabled auto-strut for this mission or what, but it was all certainly very unexpected. It is going to be interesting to see how long they have the rocket grounded before we see the next flight.
Now, Rocket Lab made a very interesting announcement this week. They have introduced their Global Hypersonic & Orbital Spaceport Technology or GHOST. The idea here is pretty simple. Rocket Lab wants to make its Electron and HASTE missions launchable from almost anywhere in the world without needing to build a permanent launch site at every location. How do you do this, though? Well, you’ve got to make the launch complex itself portable and deployable. Although such a thing would be impossible with something like SpaceX’s Starship, with a much smaller rocket like Electron, this actually makes a lot of sense. Rocket Lab plans to pack everything required to launch into standard shipping containers. Think of all the ground hardware, launch infrastructure, range control systems, and obviously the rockets themselves. This all opens the door to a whole range of applications, including hypersonic flight testing, responsive launches, missile defence testing, and potentially even orbital launches from countries that don’t have their own dedicated orbital spaceport. I’m looking at you, Australia! Now you might think this is a long-term plan, right?!
Rocket Lab and Blue Origin Updates
Well, not so fast because they’re starting with two new GHOST pads at Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 4 at Kodiak in Alaska. They even recently announced a $266 million Space Force contract for 12 suborbital launches. This even has options for six additional missions, primarily supporting missile defense. Based on all this, we are looking at years away though, right!? Wrong! Rocket Lab is targeting 2027 for the new GHOST pads at Alaska. In the meantime, the first launch under the Space Force contract is expected no earlier than the end of this year.
Now Blue Origin has been doing some interesting testing. They were out here with a New Glenn second stage simulator to test out their new vertical operations that will become the norm for launches at Launch Complex-36A. This was just a forward dome and the full-sized payload fairing, but the team did vertical stacking lifts and mating exercises to gather all the data they could from these new mechanisms. It is pretty cool to see them working on what they call the Concept of Operations while the pad is being repaired and redesigned. They had also shared this too! It is a render of what they believe Launch Complex 36B will look like with 36A in the background there. This one in front though will instead support New Glenn’s 9 x 4 engine vehicle. As far as we know, they want to keep the 7 x 2 configuration well into the future and just launch that from 36A.
Take a look at that 9 x 4 rocket here though. That second stage is so long it almost looks bizarre. For this, they are going to need a new Vertical Integration Facility along with a new Payload Processing Facility, so the infrastructure for both New Glenn vehicles is really going to be quite different. Now how could I not mention the breathtaking total solar eclipse this week? For those of you in the path here across parts of Spain, Portugal, Iceland, Greenland, and northern Russia, the total eclipse was something really quite special. Much of Europe experienced a partial eclipse, but yea, this was all happening on Wednesday this week and the images flooding onto social media were breathtaking. NASA was live streaming the views from Spain, and as it approached totality, you could really see the solar activity around that disk was absolutely spectacular. Were you there in person watching this magic!? I’d love to know what you thought of this one, and I hope you had nice clear views of the sky wherever you may have been watching from.
Now ever since NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s Ignition event, we’ve been seeing steady progress towards the ultimate goal of having a permanent Moon base, and eventually expanding outward into the rest of the solar system. There has been something to talk about almost every week. And early this week, NASA announced that they successfully tested a Lithium powered electric thruster. This is called a magnetoplasmadynamic, or MPD thruster, and unlike conventional chemical rockets, it doesn’t just burn fuel to produce thrust. Instead, it sends huge amounts of electrical current through vaporized lithium, it ionizes it into plasma and then uses magnetic fields to accelerate that plasma out of the engine. This first test impressed a lot of people with the prototype reaching 120 kilowatts. That’s more than 25 times the power of the electric thrusters currently flying on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. During this test, the central tungsten electrode reached temperatures higher than 2,800 degrees Celsius, and if that doesn’t feel crazy enough, the team eventually wants to scale this thing up to 1 megawatt. As impressive as that sounds, that still wouldn’t be enough to power a human trip to Mars. Such a mission NASA believes would require 2 to 4 megawatts of power, and multiple MPD thrusters. With that, the system needs to survive for more than 23,000 hours of operation time. That’s because these technologies are all about slow gradual efficient thrust over long periods of time instead of the much less efficient brute force approach from chemical engines.
So there is another week wrapped right up for you, my friends! I hope you enjoyed this one! If you did, don’t forget to hit subscribe so we get to keep making them. If you missed this video here, and have a little more time to help us out, check out this one next! Thanks for watching all this way through as always! I’ll catch you next weekend!
