Gearing Up for Starship Flight 4 | SpaceX Starbase Update
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- Опубліковано 31 тра 2024
- Join Jack Beyer for the latest Starbase Update, where we look at SpaceX's preparations for Starship Flight 4, including Ship 29's rollout, Orbital Launch Pad refurbishments, and a look into SpaceX's ambitious goals for 2024. Discover the significant strides made at the production site, the construction of new facilities, and the updates to the orbital launch tower sections. Plus, hear Gwynne Shotwell's vision for the Starship program, the potential of recovering both stages, and the bittersweet goodbye to Booster 4. Stay tuned for the future of space exploration as we bring you all the latest from Starbase!
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🤵 Hosted by Jack Beyer (@thejackbeyer)
🖊️ Written by Ryan Weber
🎥 Video from Mary (@BocaChicaGal), Sean Doherty, Jack Beyer, and Starbase Live.
✂️ Edited by Thomas Hayden
💼 Produced by Kevin Michael Reed (@kmreed)
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#SpaceX #StarbaseUpdate #StarshipFlight4 #SpaceXGoals2024 #GwynneShotwell #Ship29 #Booster4 #SpaceExploration #StarshipProgram #SpaceXRecovery #OrbitalLaunchPad #SpaceXStarship #AerospaceEngineering #SpaceTech #FutureOfSpace #StarshipMilestones #RocketScience #SpaceIndustry #SpaceMission #EngineeringMarvels #RocketLaunch #SpaceNews #InnovationInSpace #SpaceXDevelopments #FarewellBooster4 - Наука та технологія
It's always a good day if a Jack update is in the notifications. Thanks Jack and the NSF team.
Jack update best update
Absolutely agree!
An exciting year for Starship, and this is just the beginning, which is insane.
Fixin to get goooood quick let’s hate on Mr Elon more Awtf eva
It’s going to be an exciting year for sure.
Due to ONE man an ONE team
@@sparkysho-ze7nmit's gonna blow up again with no progress.
Jack has gotten really, REALLY good at presenting these updates! Rock on, Jack! Question: When a booster or Starship is scrapped, what happens to all that material? I assume it is recycled, but what's the process?
All we know is that its sent to a local recycler where everything is immediately chopped up into tiny pieces and then shipped out to be melted down
if only we knew someone at said recycler who could save some pieces
Cant possible squeeze any more data into a 15 minute video (OR can you?). StarBase Update With Jack is my week starter. I grab my coffee, sit down at my desk, and get caught up on all the SpaceX Stuff in Boca Chica. I could not imagine a week without Starbase updates.
same isnt jack just amazing
thank you The Field
🫡
Hey back to launch 3 .it looked to me like they have weird oscillations on re-entry on the booster ,, how much affect is there on booster control with LOX in the oxidizer tank sloshing at one rate and propellant much higher up on the rocket sloshing at a different rate .200 to 450 TONS of liquid inertia,,, and starship would have about the same amount of fuel at re-entry,, same issues???
No one does an update like Jack (love the hat). OUTSTANDING (in the sun) UPDATE!!
Love those timelapses od starship on orbit.
Really hits home the "tumbling" part
Middle of May IFT-4 could give us an IFT-5 for the 4th of July. Best fireworks show ever!
My guess is may the 4th will be ift-4
@@Supac617 been my guess ever since pi day lol
You are way too optimistic. Flight 3 occured four months after flight 2, so flight 4 would be expected ... in mid July.
Indeed
@@cube2foxthe FAA investigation will be very short this time
Jack update = best update
Excellent update Jack! Thank you!
I’ve said it before. I will say it again. You have the best open/theme music on the net. Love your channel too. Keep it up. Been watching launches since Mercury. Was born in 56. Rarely miss one. Usually watch your coverage on the big screen and have the X feed on my iPad. Love it that you let the sound play. The last launch with the sound getting louder and softer had to be due to clouds I believe. Water vapor absorbing the sound. Think water deluge.
@14:07 'retro futuristic'. Now that's a mind bending idiom :)
Do you get the feeling that the Starship should just practice, with attached legs, landing multiple times with "test" chopsticks (a test structure positioned away from the actual tower for now) to see if the ship can be controlled enough to maneuver for the chopsticks. I mean sooner rather than later. Forget the booster for a moment, or even going to space. If you can't hit the mark for the chopsticks, you can't use the tower for landing sooner. It's cheaper to practice now, as opposed to firing off both the booster and the starship. then after the Starship proves it can work with the test chopsticks, practice on the booster. You have to build the test chopstick structure, I get that, but you can improve the accuracy and reliability of the landings now. And you can improve the chopsticks quicker too. Even with, maybe shooting off another booster-starship for progress in orbital missions/testing at the same time.
Jack is the reason I give this site the 'thumbs up'
When NSF publishes an update it's always worthwhile!
Good and informative content... Thanks Jack and Team NSF!
Thanks for the update, Jack
@5.46 Why did you call me Shirley? ;) Thanks as always Jack and crew!
Just a heads up Westy, you don't have to put an @ before the time stamp. 5:46 will work by itself.
Have a good one duder!
I love the ending 😂
Mr. Musk, could you please give Jack an obsolete Raptor? On a trailer? I’m sure he’ll promise not to take it apart for another two years, and he’ll keep the shiny parts buffed. And could he borrow a Cybertruck to tow it in parades? Please? Pleeese? PLEEEEZE?
Jack is the best! My favorite NSF reporter.
Jack is the 🐐
Good bye B4 . thanks to Jack , Mary and NSF team for all these updates. everything is so encouraging .
I look forward to Monday's update at Starbase with Jack! Incredibly animated and informative while making us smile. Like it when your back in Boca Chica!!! Thanks again Jack.
Best update of the year, Jack! By this time the 6 raptors of Starship 29 have already been tested. Next, the booster. 🚀
The Booster QD could be re-designed to use ridged pipes with swivel joints instead of continuous flexible tubing. They would be far more robust against damage, and insulation layers would be easily replaced and a lot less expensive.
Another armchair engineer.
Too many Wannabees on here
Man when these videos at shot at location they just feel 1million% more awesome and put together. 👌🏻
Great video Jack & NSF, thank you!!!
Thanks for the video Jack and NSF team.
An exciting year ahead of us! Thanks for the update!
I can only imagine what is going on behind the scenes. The development rate is mind boggling.
Thank you for the update. Very interesting as ever.
The loss of attitude control on Ship as well as the glitchy payload bay door, will need to be addressed via modifications to S29. If some of the debris flying off S28 just prior to reentry was indeed TPS tiles (possibly blown off by RCS thrusters in the nose cone), that issue will have to be corrected as well.
Similarly, I expect B11 will need modifications to correct B10's partial loss of attitude control during descent through the lower atmosphere, and its failure to relight the center 13 engines on time and fully, for the landing burn.
I expect these modifications to the hardware (and any corresponding changes to software) to take considerably longer than 6 weeks.
Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if even now, SpaceX engineers might still be working to complete analysis of flight data, model it all out to confirm their interpretations, and design and evaluate potential approaches to fix the issues. By the way, its unclear if the propellant transfer test was fully successful either; if not, there could be additional related modifications and an attempt to repeat it with S29.
Which is all to say, i think the pad may well be ready within 6 weeks, but the next Ship and Booster almost certainly won't be. I think it's very likely we're seeing Gwynne's riff on Elon Time here - by assuming perfect happy-path timelines, which for this high-technical-risk R&D program is extremely unrealistic.
So, I'm still guesstimating the next flight for the first half of July, though of course I won't be complaining if SpaceX manages to pull a rabbit out of the hat, this time around. Still, not going to hold my breath.
Attitude control alone could be a stickler
I am thinking, that while you're correct about identification of issues, I think SpaceX can make those adjustments on time. Because many of those issues are relatively small adjustments to fix. As for booster attitude control I think main modification will be software. Bigger challenge will be re-igniting engines, but we saw that one thruster actually was able to lit up. Other was consumed by "engine rich combustion", but I suspect that there differences between engines, so they know what solution is actually working, what need to adjust, and what was actually failure.
Cargo bay, I think SpaceX underestimated how airtight those doors can be under high pressure, so it not vented it self. Also just small hardware change, literally just drilling few holes for venting in cargo bay.
Freezing ullage RCS on ship could be more challenging, but SpaceX for a long time is using cold gas thrusters on f9, so probably they got enough experience to solve that issue in no time.
I don't expect that ship/booster will achieve softlanding on ift4. But if it will perform better, it will be big win.
I see no reason for ITF-4 to be delayed until July for the simple reason that Space X should not have to deal with the delays that led to two WDR aborts in late February. There were 117 days from ITF-2 to ITF-. And without the WRD delay and Space X getting its ship prep more efficient expect the next launch to be no more 2 1/2 to 3 months which would be mid June at the latest.
The key issues for the next flight are fix the roll problems with both vehicles, why the booster had trouble with relighting its raptors for the landing burn. The pez dispenser door might be the easiest to resolve, but only time will tell.
That's assuming they aim to fix all the issues for the next flight. I expect they will prioritise the relight and door, because once they get those working they can start launching payload. Recovery is the killer feature, but still only a secondary mission objective. I don't think they will let recovery development slow launch cadence. They will keep throwing rockets up when they become flight ready and likely to achieve any objective rather than holding them to implement the most recent developments. In many situations the current hardware is already too far built to modify even when they expect it to fail. SpaceX would rather fly it to be sure than scrap it because they have a better design.
We don't actually know whether the booster controls were working as expected or not. It is entirely possible the extreme and odd maneuvers were a deliberate exploration of the flight envelope rather than an optimised landing profile.
@@agsystems8220 I agree 💯, except I think they're aiming for reusing booster as fast as possible.
While whole stack is either way very cheap for launcher that class (can 90-100mln) majority of that cost is on booster (ship is about 20mln). Additionally goal for reusing booster itself is doable in just near few flights, considering experience with falcon9. I don't think that spacex will risk catch attempt before second launch tower is online, but in meantime probably SpaceX wanna catch as much experience and precision, as possible. So not only soft touchdown, but hover, hover maneuver, and precision in that.
I think at least three launches that will be fully successful in regards solving new issues, similar to ift-2 to ift-3 ( ift2, failed to conduct boost back maneuver and flip maneuver. It was solved with ift-3. On ift4 I think goal as for booster itself is to keep altitude control "norminal", then ignite thrusters.
Great update Jack!
THANKS for the update Jack!
thank you jack
Whether they succeed in accomplishing all their goals or not, excitement is guaranteed for 2024 and I can’t wait!!
Great information Jack. NSF Team is top shelf. Keep up the great work and yes, I will remember to be excellent to each other.
i give Jack a double bacon award for this update
@nsf team, do you know what would be cool? If you guys were able to arrange a sit down interview with Gwynn Shotwell. It would be an excellent interview.
Awesome work SpaceX team!
Great coverage NSF! I think that full recovery is possible. It just depends on what metrics will be used to define that as being successful. SpaceX is doing big stuff. Love it!
Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative video. Great job. Keep it up.
As always, a Phenomenal Video, thanks for all the Updates and Coverages of Launches NSF!
Flight 4 and million subscribers great times 🎉
15 may have been the first to survive a landing, but SN 10 was the first to fly twice.
Great video, NSF...👍
Nice work jack.
Thanks 😊
Best space X commentary! Watching in Jamaica
That theme music always makes me want to bust a move 😂
awesome!
nearly 1million sub congrats
Y'all are pretty close to 1M subs. Keep up the good work!
A raptor engine as yard art would be awesome..
Certainly a talking point for visitors.. 😄
History in the making
agree jack does a great job
Raptor coffee table? Yes, please!
Good one, Jack.
Merci!
🤙🤙 @thejackbeyer stay awesome! 💯
I think it's extremely smart of SpaceX to build a second launch pad at Boca Chica as opposed to Brownsville because when they begin attempting to catch a returning ships/boosters, there's a very high potential for some kind of accident that could disable the launch tower/pad. Plus if they get to the point where they want to first capture BOTH booster and ship during test flights, I'm pretty sure you're going to need TWO landing zones ;?)
fantastic static fire on s29 future is coming thank you for keeping us up to date
Most excellent
At 0:18 one of the two large cryo hoses is broken. I'm thinking vibration is way intense. Looks to be a gating item to fast launch turnaround.
But Jack, that sounds like a perfectly accomplishable list of goals by the end of the year
LOL
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston Churchill.
In addition to at least SIX launches of Starship that SpaceX is planning on this year, there are, last time I looked, 35 seats on missions to orbit, almost twice as many as in 2023. Furthermore SpaceX will finally have some competition. Even Elon would like that. Winning a race in which you are the only competitor is less than thrilling. ULA has already launched a Vulcan-Centaur. BO is planning to launch in August, and will probably get at least two launches in by the end of the year. And Ariane 6 is scheduled for its first launch in late June or July. And there are at least three more ISRO GSLV launches in 2024. All four of these boosters are optimized for insertion into GTO or transfer orbits to the Moon or Mars. That means they are intrinsically more efficient for those jobs than Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. However until they can reach a launch frequency comparable to SpaceX, which launched 10 times in January 2024, 9 times in February, has already launched 10 time in March with three more scheduled, and plans on *averaging* 12 launches a month over the year, how efficient an individual booster is is secondary. There is a basic minimum annual cost to operating a medium to heavy booster that is independent of how many times you fly it. Furthermore all of the competitors are still under development, and none of them have achieved reuse yet, while SpaceX is just cranking Falcon 9s off the assembly line at a rate of four a year, and then flying them 20 times each.
I also wonder: is there still a major value in placing massive single satellites that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and more hundreds of millions to deploy to Geo-Synchronous orbit, when. I don't know about you, but I haven't watched broadcast television in over five years, and low to medium altitude satellites can provide higher bandwidth and lower end to end delay for streaming. And can a GOES satellite, like the one Falcon Heavy is set to launch in May, really monitor weather as well from 36,000km away as a constellation of satellites at 500km? At 500km a camera with a 25mm/1" wide lens has the same image resolution as a telescope with a 1.8 metre/6 foot objective at geosynch altitude! Wouldn't it be easier to lease space for your instruments on a Starlink or OneWeb or Project Kuiper satellite and have them plug their observations directly into the Internet rather than transmit them 36,000 km to a big dedicated ground dish? And geosynch satellites can only see to about latitude 55. Too bad if you live in Alaska, or Scotland, or Scandinavia!
The full-size V2 Starlink satellites have at least four times the power budget. This is critical for delivering a usable 5G service to remote locations.
I suspect the 6 week schedule mentioned by Shotwell is primarily directed at the teams working toward ITF4. All of their activities will be laid out in a critical path aimed at achieving that deliverable. However I will admit as I went over the video that my first estimate, based upon a half century of managing high-tech engineering projects, was 8 weeks. Of course I don't know exactly what went wrong and they have vastly more information.
It seems absolutely mental the turnaround on something this huge 🤯
Woohoo! Go starship, go SpaceX
Beminedful‼️STAY SHARP‼️
THE WORLD IS WATCHING.
WE ARE THE
‼️WORLD ‼️
GO SPACE X
awesome
Godspeed 💨
Give me a grid fin form S4.
You are right. If anyone can do this time line it’s team SpaceX. It’s going to to amazing to watch them cut the way for us to get to space and behind. Thank you NSF
Awesome
SpaceX’s speed remains unmatched.
Can't wait for the Frosty Popsicle!
I am looking forward to all the IFT's that will take place this year!
I would love a raptor engie
My toyota would be so happy
Recovery 2024. -yes!
It is more likely that the booster will be caught by the end of the year than the starship. The IT-4 booster needs to restart all the center engines at 10 km to slow the vehicle down enough to let the 3 center engines do their job before catching it. Great report Jack!
Let's go ....BOOM again!
so close to 1m subs i wish you guys luck.!
Agree 9:39
Hot staging at 0:50 is insane!
As for goals, I think you're right, difficult problems are what we've seen SpaceX accomplish time and again. They set them up to guide their efforts, and the entire team works towards them. But all those by the end of the year? No. I think they may achieve the first two, actual orbit, and deployment of StarLink satellites, and probably even catch of a booster. Though, that will be VERY tricky, to not mangle the OLM on the first try! Catching the Starship itself is, I agree, the most complex problem, and the one that is furthest away at this point. The ships that will fly for the rest of the year are almost all in some stage of build, if not complete. Redesigns will take time. And retrofit is probably not possible.
As for the OLM, and the new one at LC-39A, I say again, they need a flame trench. The only way to redirect that much exhaust and heat is with a flame trench. The bidet we currently have is good, but not good enough. They are getting WAY TOO MUCH flame reflection, and it is leading to damage on the OLM. The only solution is to lift it higher, and build the flame trench to divert the flames AWAY from the OLM and the rocket as well. That would be my guess as to why they're disassembling the OLM legs at LC-39A. Time will tell...
And thanks Jack! And the entire @NSF team, you guys rock! It's so much fun watching these videos and keeping up. So much is happening, so fast that without your efforts, and many like y'all of course, we'd be lost trying to track through articles and other data sources...
Very cool to see you back in action mate.
This one is very concerning for sure.
Even tho the booster was flipping around it did corrected itself. If you look at the bottom telemetry the booster achieved a vertical profile. It was waiting for the Raptors to fire up for the landing.
Chilling out watching this update and having a drink from my new 17oz NSF flight test 3 mug. Unfortunately I discovered its 15oz not 17oz. I tested multiple time. This size mistake needs to be corrected on the website. So clearly I'm a little disappointing, but can't imagine anyone at NSF would make this mistake intentionally. However very happy with the patch. The colors are amazing. I do wish the image & text colors on the mug popped like they do on my Flight test 3 patch. On my mug the image of Starship and the text bordering that image is much darker in comparison to the image on the mug seen on the website.
As for Starship
I can't be the only one that thinks the Ships should have landing legs. Maybe SpaceX should design in the option of the both. Then they would have a back up landing option incase if issues with either system. Especially once it's carrying humans.
Seriously! It be very tragic if the sadly scrapped SN15 turned out to be the last Starship to land (on earth) successfully using legs?
Also Elon I think Jack/NSF deserves atleast one of the old raptor engines from booster 4. 😅
I was thinking that maybe landing legs could be added on for each vehicle and have then land them first on a drone and then at the launch pad. Then once that is done well they can try to catch them.
@@michaeldeierhoi4096 It's just easier, faster and much cheaper to soft water land them until they are ready to try catching boosters.
The current drone ships wouldn't work for the massive boosters and Ships. It would take too much time and money to develop new drone ships at this point in development. However I wouldn't be suprised if one day. After Starship is very flight proven. SpaceX will invest in Starship specific drone ships.
@@smavtmb2196 That all makes sense.
RE Starship pad demo at SLC 39-A, my guess is that NASA is going to require some form of directional flame diverter. The water deluge system under the Starbase OLM is very impressive, but you still have highly energetic shock waves going in every direction away from the OLM. I get that SpaceX is likely constrained with what they can do at the Boca Chica site, but at historic pad 39-A I bet NASA is putting the kabosh on those shock waves going in every direction.
Solvable, yes. If the FAA approves the six launches that SpaceX wants, i think it will get done.
As a former Air Force fighter guy, FOD stands for " Foreign Object Damage". This is a friendly FYI. I love what you do!
The official FAA definition is Foreign Object Debris. Damage caused by Foreign Object Debris is called Foreign Object Damage. Also FOD. 😅
I guess it's correct to say FOD begets FOD... - Das
www.faa.gov/airports/airport_safety/fod#:~:text=As%20defined%20in%20AC%20150,carrier%20personnel%20and%20damage%20aircraft.
www.faa.gov/airports/resources/advisory_circulars/index.cfm/go/document.current/documentNumber/150_5210-24
3:03 everytime I see that clip of the guy handing the other guy that level and the other guy puts the level right back down, I laugh. Reminds me of a joke I'd always play when I was helping a friend with backyard construction. He'd ask himself out loud what sort of tool he needed, and I'd whip out a crude drawing of a penis. 😆
IMHO, the Pez dispenser is upside down- the door should be at the top of the payload bay and the satellites loaded through it, then lowered one at a time until full. This will allow the dispenser to have a low power mechanism that only needs to slowly lower the sats rather than be able to lift all of them up at one gee, as it must to load the last one. Once in space, that low power system can easily move them up to the door.
They will get it done
Nice :)
Where do they intend to land the actual ship part of the Starship? Will they build out a massive drone boat or will it return to the launch area?
The latest idea we've heard is that it comes back to the launch site and gets caught by the chopsticks -- same as booster. We'll see what ends up actually happening though. Basically guaranteed to be a launch site return one way or another though
"RECOVER" is not the same as "CATCH."
The ship goes to orbit, which means from there it can go back to the landing site. RTLS is actually harder for the booster.
There was venting issues visible in the video and it's my guess that this is an ongoing consequence of the launch pad not having a proper flame diverter and trench. When you watch the launch you can see the rocket is being bathed in shockwaves and that can NOT be good. In fact, it's the kind of thing that can rupture prop lines which would give us the venting.
Another problem as far as I can see is that they appear to be lacking sufficient delta V and this is true even without the 150t payload, with the additional 150t I don't see Starship making LEO at all! In order to improve the delta V they will either need to significantly increase the size of Starship/SuperHeavy or they need to significantly increase the Isp of the engines and I don't see that happening anytime soon.
I wonder if maybe they'll use the 2nd tower as the "catcher" so that if there's an oopsie it won't completely shut operations down.
I'd love to hear more about what Spacex needs to do to catch Starship and Superheavy...modifications to the ships, launch tower, chopsticks etc...sounds cool. Is it possible the second launch tower might be (at least initially) used as a catch tower? It looks like it's being built away from the tank farm...which is where I would want to make my first attempts at catching a great big giant burning hot explosive thingy.
Amazes me that even with a protective cover the booster still manages til rip off the hoses at their connection point. Hopefully the next OLM has alot (and i mean alot) of upgrade
Raptors are hot, I'm sure they are working on something to upgrade the QD protection because that is a major refurb point at the moment.