Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
SpaceX is now just a matter ofdays away from their second attempt at launching
the world's most powerful rocket into orbit. While the initial journey of the Starship
may have ended with a rapid,unscheduled disassembly, we can safely say that
the second orbital launch attempt will playout differently than the first. We still
(00:20):
won't guarantee success, but we knowthat SpaceX has made over one thousand changes
to both the Starship rocket and theground based launch system that will ensure an
even more exciting result the second timearound. The first thing that people need
to know is that this next pairingof Starship and Super Heavy Booster is an
almost entirely different rocket from the onethat we saw fly on April twentieth.
(00:44):
The next stack to make an attemptat reaching outer space will be the twenty
fifth build of the Starship upper stagevehicle and the ninth version of the Super
Heavy Launch booster. Because SpaceX usesiterative design at their Bokocheka production facility,
these rockets were already build with somemajor upgrades before the four to twenty launch
event happened. But in the timesince then, SpaceX has learned from their
(01:07):
past mistakes and made up to onethousand new improvements to the starship. Probably
the most significant of those changes isthe addition of something called hot staging to
the super heavy booster design. Thisis an updated and much more dramatic way
to separate the two stages of therocket once the booster has done its job
and push the ship above the atmosphere. SpaceX had originally planned on using simple
(01:32):
inertia to separate the rocket. Theywould throttle down all engines in the booster,
release the clamps that hold it tothe ship, and then begin flipping
the booster over to push away fromthe upper stage. The booster has to
flip around anyway to initiate a boost, backburn, and return to launch site,
so might as well take advantage ofthat momentum to separate the rocket.
A very efficient and sensible way tohandle it. That efficiency has been abandoned
(01:57):
in favor of hot staging, whichit is a method designed to maintain the
maximum amount of thrust as the rocketcontinues to climb towards orbital velocity. In
order to hot stage rocket, youfire up the second stage engines while the
main booster is still running. Thebooster will throttle down, but Unlike most
other rockets, there will be nomain engine cutoff prior to separation, so
(02:19):
the force of the upper stage enginepushes the ship away from the booster.
This eliminates any period of time wherethe upper stage is just coasting through space.
Instead, we go very quickly fromfull thrust of the booster to full
thrust of the upper stage. Thisis pretty important because first stage separation happens
at a relatively low altitude where gravityand drag are still very much acting on
(02:44):
the Starship, So anytime when theengines are not running, the ship is
actively being pulled back towards the surfaceand losing velocity. In order for Starship
to make the best use of thelimited fuel supply it has, it would
be ideal for the ship to reachorbital velocity as quickly as possible. In
order to accommodate the hot staging maneuver, SpaceX has added one additional ring section
(03:07):
to the top of the super heavybooster. This new ring is perforated with
vent holes that will allow the rocketexhaust to be safely released during the hot
stage event, and the top domeof the booster's fuel tank has been reinforced
to withstand the thrust and heat fromthose upper stage Raptor engines. Luckily,
the stainless steel material of the Starshiplends itself very well to a high heat
(03:30):
environment. Trying a similar maneuver withan aluminum alloy booster like the Falcon nine
would be pretty dangerous if not donevery carefully, but Starship will take it
like a champ. Speaking of theRaptor engines, these were a primary source
of failure in the first launch attemptof the Starship. From the moment SpaceX
(03:51):
fired up to booster, three Raptorengines failed to ignite properly, and then
throughout the course of the doomed flight, another five or six engines expl floated
in mid air. SpaceX would laterconclude that fuel leaks inside the plumbing system
of the booster's thrust puck led toraging fires within the engine bay. We
can see this pretty clearly from trackingcamps as the booster reached its final seconds
(04:14):
before spinning out. SpaceX says thatthe fire severed the connection between the engines
and the ship's onboard flight computer,which led to a total loss of control
over the booster. The fire inthe engine bay was likely caused by inadequate
shielding between each of the thirty threeengines. This is something that was retrofitted
to Booster seven long after it wasinitially constructed, but Booster nine has been
(04:36):
built from the ground up with reinforcedshielding in the engine bay. Another thing
to keep in mind is that theBooster on four to twenty was fitted with
the first ever full set of RaptorVersion two engines. And since we know
that SpaceX is using iterative design principleson all of their starship components, it
(04:57):
makes sense that the first engines theybuild will be the the worst engines that
they build because their engineers are constantlylearning and improving as they go along.
So not every engine on that firstBooster was created equally, obviously, and
while it's easy to fixate on theengines that failed, another way to look
at this would be that even witha raging inferno inside the engine bay,
(05:18):
and with all of these explosions goingon in very close proximity, the majority
of those thirty three Raptor engines continuedto function right up until the vehicle is
self destructed. So the weakest engineson Booster nine should be at least as
sturdy as the strongest engines on Boosterseven, and that should be good enough.
(05:39):
Another key upgrade to the Raptor engineson Booster nine has been the transition
from hydraulic engine gimbals to electric motorcontrols. An engine gimble is a mechanism
that allows the nozzle to swivel aroundand angle the thrust in a way that
helps steer the rocket. Thirteen ofthe engines on the super heavy Booster have
gimbal mechanisms, and wrap have morerange of motion than any other gimbaled rocket
(06:02):
engine, so these are very importantmechanisms. The hydraulic engine gimble was a
significant point of failure on the firstStarship flight back in April. The hydraulic
pressure system exploded within the first minuteafter launch, and that pretty much eliminated
any ability to steer the rocket.In Booster nine, these hydraulic actuators have
(06:25):
been replaced by electric motors. Theyare simple screw type motors that should be
much more reliable and hopefully prevent anotherdeath spiral into self destruction. And speaking
of destruction, not only did theStarship meet an explosive demise, it nearly
took the entire launch pad and toweralong with it. This is one of
the more talked about results of thefirst flight attempt because it is pretty normal
(06:48):
for a rocket to fail on itsfirst launch. Usually they don't explode in
mid air, but most new rocketsdo fail to reach orbit on their first
test run. However, no rocketbefore has ever left behind a crater in
the ground like Starship. We arelooking at something in the neighborhood of fourteen
million pounds of force exerted onto aslab of reinforced concrete. Now that sounds
(07:13):
like an obvious fail, but togive SpaceX full credit, they did use
the strongest concrete in existence, andthey didn't think that the slab would fully
survive the launch. But they alsodidn't think it would shatter and allow the
thrust from the booster to dig ahole and send big shards of concrete flying
out in all directions like cannonballs either. And luckily for SpaceX, even in
(07:34):
the midst of that carnage on theground, the only thing that was really
destroyed was the concrete slab, ohand a mini van and a bunch of
cameras. But the highly complex orbitallaunch mount and the gigantic robotic launch tower
remained intact. This was a majorbreak for SpaceX. Not only is Starship
(07:54):
totally unlike any other rocket, butthe launch infrastructure that it requires is also
unlike any other launch pad. ElonMusk has said before that the ground system
is actually more valuable than the rocket. They can rebuild a ship and booster
in a matter of weeks. Thoseare expendable, but losing the ground systems
would be a worst case scenario.Because the launch mount and tower are so
(08:18):
integral to Starship, you'll often hearto them referred to as stage zero.
Most rockets are either two stage orthree stage, and not just refers to
how many times they separate from athrust section before reaching orbital velocity. Starship
is a two stage rocket because thereis only one separation event before orbit.
Booster is stage one, ship isstage two, but it is impossible to
(08:41):
even get the booster fired up withoutstage zero because this launch mount contains most
of the systems that are responsible forigniting the thirty three engines on a typical
rocket, these systems are located insidethe booster, but in an effort towards
maximum efficiency and weight saving, SpaceXhas made this an outboard system and built
(09:03):
it into the launch mount. Andthen, obviously there is the gigantic steel
launch tower, the Mechazillo with itsiconic robot chopstick arms. Not only is
this an important system for lifting andstacking the booster, but it also provides
an umbilical connection to fuel the upperstage separately from the booster, and eventually,
if all goes well, those chopstickarms will be catching rockets in mid
(09:26):
air anyway. To ensure that thereis no repeat of the cratering event from
the first launch, SpaceX has installeda totally new and unique suppression system underneath
Stage zero. According to Elon Musk, this is an idea that had been
in the works long before the firstlaunch. It's just that SpaceX didn't have
(09:46):
enough time to get it installed.And again they didn't think that the rocket
would dig a hole, but regardlessof that, the whole would have needed
to be dug anyway, so it'snot all bad. After picking out all
of the bits of shattered concrete andmangled rebus, SpaceX went about the process
of rebuilding and reinforcing the foundation oftheir launch mount. Once that was complete,
(10:07):
it was time for the showerhead andyes, pretty much everything in the
starship world has a ridiculous nickname attachedto it. This is just the way
it is. The shower head isa sandwich of two ultra heavy duty steel
plates, and in between them arechannels for water to flow through, and
the top plate is perforated with holesthat create water jets under high pressure.
(10:28):
Unlike your normal shower head, thewater does not just shoot straight up.
That wouldn't be particularly helpful in thissituation. The water jets are moving in
very specific angles to push the heatand steam away from the center point underneath
the rocket. This is a drasticchange from the typical water deluge system and
flamed verter that is used underneath everyother rocket, and the Starship system is
(10:54):
vastly more complex than anything that hasever been attempted before. You see.
A typical water suppression system is justa few gigantic hoses that pump out a
massive amount of water into the areabelow the rocket, and then any resulting
steam and exhaust gas is channeled downinto a trench that pushes it to the
side and away from the launch pad. From the engine test that we've seen
(11:16):
so far, SpaceX has fired theentire complement of thirty three booster engines into
the shower head a couple of timesnow, and the only result that we've
seen has been a very large cloudof white steam. This is a pretty
dramatic departure from the old static firetests. Even when they were not launching
(11:37):
at full throttle, the raptor engineswould always kick up humongous plumes of really
dark dust and smoke, and itwould almost always send little chunks of concrete
flying in all directions. So thelong plumes of white steam are downright civilized
by comparison, and they bode verywell for the next launch attempt of the
Starship. So how do we knowthat the Starship launch number two is coming
(12:00):
shortly? Well, it's because we'veseen the communication between SpaceX and the FAA
that verifies the federal agency is satisfiedwith the changes and upgrades that SpaceX has
made. Anytime that a flying machinelike a rocket doesn't work the way it
was intended, and especially when thereis a catastrophic failure involved, the FAA
has to launch an incident investigation.So it's not a big deal. It
(12:24):
just means that the agency has tocheck in with SpaceX and figure out what
went wrong, then work out whatsteps are being taken to prevent that from
happening again. Elon Musk recently showeda list of sixty three FAA approved upgrades
and modifications that have been made toStarship and the launch system. Fifty seven
of those are currently implemented and sixwill apply to future launches, So those
(12:46):
are likely changes in the design thatcan't be made retroactively to an existing rocket,
which means that the next Starship wesee on the launchpad will already be
an improvement over the existing vehicle.In early September, the FAA close their
mishap investigation into the circumstances around theStarship vehicle failure, and on October thirty
(13:07):
first, the agency announced that theyhad completed their safety review of the property
at Starbase and the surrounding area afterone final green light from the Fish and
Wildlife Services to confirm that SpaceX won'tbe flooding the nearby ocean and wetlands with
contaminated water from the showerhead. Starshipwill be a go for launch, and
(13:28):
all signs point to SpaceX moving asquickly as possible to get the rocket on
the pad and in the air.This month. Of course, no one
can predict what's going to happen afterthose engines kick on, but that's the
best part of this whole event.Success is far from certain, but excitement
is guaranteed. Ps. We arestill selling these Starship shirts and other items
(13:48):
in our merch store. What bettertime to pick one up for yourself,
or if you'd like, you canearn one through our newsletter referral program.
You can sign up for our newsletterat www dot the Tesla space dot com.
SpaceX is now just a matter ofdays away from their second attempt at launching
the world's most powerful rocket into orbit. While the initial journey of the Starship
may have ended with a rapid,unscheduled disassembly, we can safely say that
the second orbital launch attempt will playout differently than the first. We still
(00:20):
won't guarantee success, but we knowthat SpaceX has made over one thousand changes
to both the Starship rocket and theground based launch system that will ensure an
even more exciting result the second timearound. The first thing that people need
to know is that this next pairingof Starship and Super Heavy Booster is an
almost entirely different rocket from the onethat we saw fly on April twentieth.
(00:44):
The next stack to make an attemptat reaching outer space will be the twenty
fifth build of the Starship upper stagevehicle and the ninth version of the Super
Heavy Launch booster. Because SpaceX usesiterative design at their Bokocheka production facility,
these rockets were already build with somemajor upgrades before the four to twenty launch
event happened. But in the timesince then, SpaceX has learned from their
(01:07):
past mistakes and made up to onethousand new improvements to the starship. Probably
the most significant of those changes isthe addition of something called hot staging to
the super heavy booster design. Thisis an updated and much more dramatic way
to separate the two stages of therocket once the booster has done its job
and push the ship above the atmosphere. SpaceX had originally planned on using simple
(01:32):
inertia to separate the rocket. Theywould throttle down all engines in the booster,
release the clamps that hold it tothe ship, and then begin flipping
the booster over to push away fromthe upper stage. The booster has to
flip around anyway to initiate a boost, backburn, and return to launch site,
so might as well take advantage ofthat momentum to separate the rocket.
A very efficient and sensible way tohandle it. That efficiency has been abandoned
(01:57):
in favor of hot staging, whichit is a method designed to maintain the
maximum amount of thrust as the rocketcontinues to climb towards orbital velocity. In
order to hot stage rocket, youfire up the second stage engines while the
main booster is still running. Thebooster will throttle down, but Unlike most
other rockets, there will be nomain engine cutoff prior to separation, so
(02:19):
the force of the upper stage enginepushes the ship away from the booster.
This eliminates any period of time wherethe upper stage is just coasting through space.
Instead, we go very quickly fromfull thrust of the booster to full
thrust of the upper stage. Thisis pretty important because first stage separation happens
at a relatively low altitude where gravityand drag are still very much acting on
(02:44):
the Starship, So anytime when theengines are not running, the ship is
actively being pulled back towards the surfaceand losing velocity. In order for Starship
to make the best use of thelimited fuel supply it has, it would
be ideal for the ship to reachorbital velocity as quickly as possible. In
order to accommodate the hot staging maneuver, SpaceX has added one additional ring section
(03:07):
to the top of the super heavybooster. This new ring is perforated with
vent holes that will allow the rocketexhaust to be safely released during the hot
stage event, and the top domeof the booster's fuel tank has been reinforced
to withstand the thrust and heat fromthose upper stage Raptor engines. Luckily,
the stainless steel material of the Starshiplends itself very well to a high heat
(03:30):
environment. Trying a similar maneuver withan aluminum alloy booster like the Falcon nine
would be pretty dangerous if not donevery carefully, but Starship will take it
like a champ. Speaking of theRaptor engines, these were a primary source
of failure in the first launch attemptof the Starship. From the moment SpaceX
(03:51):
fired up to booster, three Raptorengines failed to ignite properly, and then
throughout the course of the doomed flight, another five or six engines expl floated
in mid air. SpaceX would laterconclude that fuel leaks inside the plumbing system
of the booster's thrust puck led toraging fires within the engine bay. We
can see this pretty clearly from trackingcamps as the booster reached its final seconds
(04:14):
before spinning out. SpaceX says thatthe fire severed the connection between the engines
and the ship's onboard flight computer,which led to a total loss of control
over the booster. The fire inthe engine bay was likely caused by inadequate
shielding between each of the thirty threeengines. This is something that was retrofitted
to Booster seven long after it wasinitially constructed, but Booster nine has been
(04:36):
built from the ground up with reinforcedshielding in the engine bay. Another thing
to keep in mind is that theBooster on four to twenty was fitted with
the first ever full set of RaptorVersion two engines. And since we know
that SpaceX is using iterative design principleson all of their starship components, it
(04:57):
makes sense that the first engines theybuild will be the the worst engines that
they build because their engineers are constantlylearning and improving as they go along.
So not every engine on that firstBooster was created equally, obviously, and
while it's easy to fixate on theengines that failed, another way to look
at this would be that even witha raging inferno inside the engine bay,
(05:18):
and with all of these explosions goingon in very close proximity, the majority
of those thirty three Raptor engines continuedto function right up until the vehicle is
self destructed. So the weakest engineson Booster nine should be at least as
sturdy as the strongest engines on Boosterseven, and that should be good enough.
(05:39):
Another key upgrade to the Raptor engineson Booster nine has been the transition
from hydraulic engine gimbals to electric motorcontrols. An engine gimble is a mechanism
that allows the nozzle to swivel aroundand angle the thrust in a way that
helps steer the rocket. Thirteen ofthe engines on the super heavy Booster have
gimbal mechanisms, and wrap have morerange of motion than any other gimbaled rocket
(06:02):
engine, so these are very importantmechanisms. The hydraulic engine gimble was a
significant point of failure on the firstStarship flight back in April. The hydraulic
pressure system exploded within the first minuteafter launch, and that pretty much eliminated
any ability to steer the rocket.In Booster nine, these hydraulic actuators have
(06:25):
been replaced by electric motors. Theyare simple screw type motors that should be
much more reliable and hopefully prevent anotherdeath spiral into self destruction. And speaking
of destruction, not only did theStarship meet an explosive demise, it nearly
took the entire launch pad and toweralong with it. This is one of
the more talked about results of thefirst flight attempt because it is pretty normal
(06:48):
for a rocket to fail on itsfirst launch. Usually they don't explode in
mid air, but most new rocketsdo fail to reach orbit on their first
test run. However, no rocketbefore has ever left behind a crater in
the ground like Starship. We arelooking at something in the neighborhood of fourteen
million pounds of force exerted onto aslab of reinforced concrete. Now that sounds
(07:13):
like an obvious fail, but togive SpaceX full credit, they did use
the strongest concrete in existence, andthey didn't think that the slab would fully
survive the launch. But they alsodidn't think it would shatter and allow the
thrust from the booster to dig ahole and send big shards of concrete flying
out in all directions like cannonballs either. And luckily for SpaceX, even in
(07:34):
the midst of that carnage on theground, the only thing that was really
destroyed was the concrete slab, ohand a mini van and a bunch of
cameras. But the highly complex orbitallaunch mount and the gigantic robotic launch tower
remained intact. This was a majorbreak for SpaceX. Not only is Starship
(07:54):
totally unlike any other rocket, butthe launch infrastructure that it requires is also
unlike any other launch pad. ElonMusk has said before that the ground system
is actually more valuable than the rocket. They can rebuild a ship and booster
in a matter of weeks. Thoseare expendable, but losing the ground systems
would be a worst case scenario.Because the launch mount and tower are so
(08:18):
integral to Starship, you'll often hearto them referred to as stage zero.
Most rockets are either two stage orthree stage, and not just refers to
how many times they separate from athrust section before reaching orbital velocity. Starship
is a two stage rocket because thereis only one separation event before orbit.
Booster is stage one, ship isstage two, but it is impossible to
(08:41):
even get the booster fired up withoutstage zero because this launch mount contains most
of the systems that are responsible forigniting the thirty three engines on a typical
rocket, these systems are located insidethe booster, but in an effort towards
maximum efficiency and weight saving, SpaceXhas made this an outboard system and built
(09:03):
it into the launch mount. Andthen, obviously there is the gigantic steel
launch tower, the Mechazillo with itsiconic robot chopstick arms. Not only is
this an important system for lifting andstacking the booster, but it also provides
an umbilical connection to fuel the upperstage separately from the booster, and eventually,
if all goes well, those chopstickarms will be catching rockets in mid
(09:26):
air anyway. To ensure that thereis no repeat of the cratering event from
the first launch, SpaceX has installeda totally new and unique suppression system underneath
Stage zero. According to Elon Musk, this is an idea that had been
in the works long before the firstlaunch. It's just that SpaceX didn't have
(09:46):
enough time to get it installed.And again they didn't think that the rocket
would dig a hole, but regardlessof that, the whole would have needed
to be dug anyway, so it'snot all bad. After picking out all
of the bits of shattered concrete andmangled rebus, SpaceX went about the process
of rebuilding and reinforcing the foundation oftheir launch mount. Once that was complete,
(10:07):
it was time for the showerhead andyes, pretty much everything in the
starship world has a ridiculous nickname attachedto it. This is just the way
it is. The shower head isa sandwich of two ultra heavy duty steel
plates, and in between them arechannels for water to flow through, and
the top plate is perforated with holesthat create water jets under high pressure.
(10:28):
Unlike your normal shower head, thewater does not just shoot straight up.
That wouldn't be particularly helpful in thissituation. The water jets are moving in
very specific angles to push the heatand steam away from the center point underneath
the rocket. This is a drasticchange from the typical water deluge system and
flamed verter that is used underneath everyother rocket, and the Starship system is
(10:54):
vastly more complex than anything that hasever been attempted before. You see.
A typical water suppression system is justa few gigantic hoses that pump out a
massive amount of water into the areabelow the rocket, and then any resulting
steam and exhaust gas is channeled downinto a trench that pushes it to the
side and away from the launch pad. From the engine test that we've seen
(11:16):
so far, SpaceX has fired theentire complement of thirty three booster engines into
the shower head a couple of timesnow, and the only result that we've
seen has been a very large cloudof white steam. This is a pretty
dramatic departure from the old static firetests. Even when they were not launching
(11:37):
at full throttle, the raptor engineswould always kick up humongous plumes of really
dark dust and smoke, and itwould almost always send little chunks of concrete
flying in all directions. So thelong plumes of white steam are downright civilized
by comparison, and they bode verywell for the next launch attempt of the
Starship. So how do we knowthat the Starship launch number two is coming
(12:00):
shortly? Well, it's because we'veseen the communication between SpaceX and the FAA
that verifies the federal agency is satisfiedwith the changes and upgrades that SpaceX has
made. Anytime that a flying machinelike a rocket doesn't work the way it
was intended, and especially when thereis a catastrophic failure involved, the FAA
has to launch an incident investigation.So it's not a big deal. It
(12:24):
just means that the agency has tocheck in with SpaceX and figure out what
went wrong, then work out whatsteps are being taken to prevent that from
happening again. Elon Musk recently showeda list of sixty three FAA approved upgrades
and modifications that have been made toStarship and the launch system. Fifty seven
of those are currently implemented and sixwill apply to future launches, So those
(12:46):
are likely changes in the design thatcan't be made retroactively to an existing rocket,
which means that the next Starship wesee on the launchpad will already be
an improvement over the existing vehicle.In early September, the FAA close their
mishap investigation into the circumstances around theStarship vehicle failure, and on October thirty
(13:07):
first, the agency announced that theyhad completed their safety review of the property
at Starbase and the surrounding area afterone final green light from the Fish and
Wildlife Services to confirm that SpaceX won'tbe flooding the nearby ocean and wetlands with
contaminated water from the showerhead. Starshipwill be a go for launch, and
(13:28):
all signs point to SpaceX moving asquickly as possible to get the rocket on
the pad and in the air.This month. Of course, no one
can predict what's going to happen afterthose engines kick on, but that's the
best part of this whole event.Success is far from certain, but excitement
is guaranteed. Ps. We arestill selling these Starship shirts and other items
(13:48):
in our merch store. What bettertime to pick one up for yourself,
or if you'd like, you canearn one through our newsletter referral program.
You can sign up for our newsletterat www dot the Tesla space dot com.
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