another week another starship prototype
bites the dust should we now be
discouraged by all the starship
explosions but on the bright side spacex
just released an official starship
users guide so let's see what are the most
interesting infos there as for the
Dragon Demo-2 mission it seems that we
are still on track for a mid to end may
launch now even complete with the old
school NASA logo and NASA even quietly
updated their Artemis PDF file and we
get some extremely interesting new
details for the Artemis missions and
thus a clearer picture of the complete
Artemis timeline in the 2020s as always
a lot to talk about so stay tuned
so it happened again
first the mk1 then the SN1 now the SN3
they just keep biting the dust again and
again anyways last time the cryogenic
pressure test led to a weld failure in
the lower section of sn1 the so called
thrust puck thus yielding to the
pressure and therefore initiating the
rapid disassembly sn3 however as Elon
did now confirm via Twitter
failed because of bad commanding so what
appears to have happened is that the
pressure control valves which should
have been open in order to allow
liquefied nitrogen to flow into the
liquid oxygen tank so the lower tank
were probably not opened as Elon
indicated in this tweet therefore not
enough liquefied nitrogen could flow
into the oxygen tank and therefore the
pressure of the tank was not high enough
the upper tank the methane tank however
was completely filled therefore the
weight of the upper tank slowly started
pressing down on the lower tank which as
we now know was not filled enough
therefore the pressure in the tank was
too low so that it started deforming
under the weight of the upper tank and
thus the whole structure imploded it
therefore was a test configuration
mistake and didn't have anything to do
with SN3 itself failing which is at
least a bit of good news but of course
now many people are discouraged Oh God
starship will never fly look at this
they just keep failing failing and
failing we will never fly to Mars we
will be forever trapped here on earth we
are all gonna die here for a perspective
let's just have a look at the early days
of NASA we all know that NASA achieved
amazing things in the late 60s and early
70s with the Apollo missions but what we
tend to forget are all the failures that came
before which paved the way
for these successes afterwards Apollo
one was of course the most tragic and
sad one where three astronauts died
during a test of the Apollo capsule on
the launch pad but even before that
before the Gemini and Mercury
missions NASA was really struggling to
even get a rocket flying the Vanguard TV3
6th of December 1957 the Atlas A on
the 11th of June 1957 the SM 65 C Atlas
on the 24th of September 1959 the Juno II
on the 16th of July 1959 the Redstone MRLV MR-1
on the 21st of November 1960 the
Titan 1 on the 5th of February 1960 the
Atlas SM-65F on the 9th of April 1961
the Atlas-Centaur 5 on the 2nd of March
1965 so what we often tend to forget
after a long time are the failures that
led to the success when we watch
documentaries about the space race and
the Apollo moon landings we focus on the
moon landings not on the many rocket
explosions that paved the way for the
Saturn V without all the lessons learned
from these failures we wouldn't have had
any moon landings the same will be true
for starship it is really easy to get
frustrated especially with such a
difficult mega project such as starship
which has nothing less as a goal to
advance humanity to the next level and
enable us to live on other worlds but
failing is part of the process without
failing no cities on the moon and no
cities on Mars so we shouldn't let
ourselves be discouraged because we saw
how often NASA failed in the 50s and
60s and they still were able to achieve
their goal in the end and of course
starship SN4 is already being
assembled and will soon be ready yes
that's how insanely fast
Starships nowadays are being just poured out
of the assembly line now we start to
fully understand that indeed it is a
starship assembly line what we see here
we hope that SN4 will make it
and if not then SN5 or SN6 it
doesn't matter because in the end just
like NASA did it in the late 60s SpaceX
will also achieve their end goal and how
the end goal for starship will look like
the new official starship users guide is
giving us a glimpse of while we don't
learn anything
groundbreakingly new about starship in
this manual the cargo configuration for
starship is detailed for example and
how a payload would be deployed in this
figure here shown for the case of a
large satellite or a space telescope
also interesting is that the interior
diameter of starship will be 8 meters
and how exactly the radii are arranged
in the upper conical section of starship
then there is some technical talk about
the load distribution within starship and
what kind of acceleration a payload will
have to endure payload adaptors are
detailed payload electrical interfaces
even acoustic oscillations and shock
environments are detailed and at what
frequencies they occur we can also read
that launches will start from both
Kennedy Space Center and Boca Chica the
performance of starship is also detailed
which we of course already knew that it
would be insanely capable without
orbital refueling we have hundred-plus
metric tons to low Earth orbit and 21
metric tons to geosynchronous transfer
orbit landing on the Moon and Mars
require orbital refueling with orbital
refueling starship can deliver more than
hundred metric tons to each of these
destinations which is just absolutely
insane
we are shown an example of the cargo
configuration of starship deploying
pressurized Rovers a rendering which we
already have known and talked about
plenty of times and about which we shall
talk even more later on in the video
because this will play an important role
in the Artemis program and now finally
the crew configuration is also briefly
mentioned with this nice rendering of
starship lifting off from or landing on
the moon with a quite impressive moon
base in the background this of course is
the final goal of starship enabling up
to hundred people per trip in the
interior it says that starship will
include private cabins large common
areas centralized storage solar storm
shelters and a viewing gallery now we
personally kind of doubt that the
hundred people configuration will really
be viable for trips to Mars we have the
strong suspicion that it will be very
soon found out that hundred people
crammed together in a thousand cubic
meter volume on a six-month trip with no
means of escaping might prove to be an
experience a bit too intense for many
individuals severe psychological
problems and disorders would be the
consequence in our opinion I for example
would certainly not fly to Mars with 99
other people on board confined in such a
relatively small space despite all the
love for Mars no thanks we strongly
believe that the number will be reduced
to 50 or even 30 people which is still a
lot in order to reduce the risk of
psychological disorders on Mars trips
for trips to the moon however we think
that a hundred people configuration
would also work since a trip to the moon
only takes two days instead of six
months so 90 times less which is
absolutely doable regarding the
psychological well-being of the
passengers therefore we would most
likely first sign up for a trip to the
moon but not for a trip to Mars
sorry at least not in the hundred people
configuration so the purpose of the
starship users guide is of course to
already now advertise starship
and its insane payload capabilities to
different space companies and space
organizations hopefully many will
decide to employ starship for their
future space missions be it cargo or
crewed missions it's our dream actually
that many nations will choose starship for
their future crewed moon missions now
regarding the demo2 mission we have the
good news that apparently the Falcon 9
engine incident during the last StarLink
launch and the crew dragon parachute
incident both don't have any effect on
the launch date
in fact now astronauts Soichi Noguchi
from japan joins us astronauts Mike
Hopkins Victor Glover and Shannon Walker
for the crew one mission which is set to
take place sometime in the second half
of 2020 after the successful completion
of the demo2 mission now initially a
Russian cosmonaut should have been the
fourth member however the Russian space
agency Roscosmos said NIET officially
because crew dragon is unproven which is
of course a weird argument because it's
successfully docked to the ISS already
last year in an uncrewed test flight
the demo-1 mission of course the
Russian space agency is not happy that
the US will now not have to pay them a
hefty premium to fly to the ISS
employing their Soyuz spacecraft as the
US humiliatingly had to do for the
last decade NASA had to pay an
incredible 86 million dollars per seat
aboard the Soyuz and the cost for crew
dragon as low as 20 million dollars per
seat in the 7 seat configuration and 35
million dollars per seat in the 4 seat
configuration so in the most expensive
configuration still not even half the
price Roscosmos asked now of course
Roscosmos will lose a very strong
income stream which they certainly don't
like their space launch business is also
severely in decline because of SpaceX
which is completely taking over their
market share as we can see in this chart
here so Roscosmos aren't exactly
friends of SpaceX which totally explains
why they said NIET now get this we will
have a specially painted Falcon 9 for
the first crewed flights to the ISS
complete with the wonderful old-school
red worm NASA logo NASA is back in the
game thanks to spaceX and we are really
happy to see the red NASA logo again
after all this time almost brings tears
of joy to our eyes and you know what
else will also bring tears of joy to our
eyes
if successful of course the Artemis
missions and NASA just updated their
Artemis program roadmap with some highly
fascinating details we know that
Doug Loverro just said a few weeks ago that
the lunar gateway wouldn't necessarily
be needed for the first crewed flight to
the moon in 2024 with Artemis 3 the
Artemis one mission by the way will be
an uncrewed test flight with the Orion
capsule around the moon in 2021
and the first ever launch of SLS and
Artemis 2 will test the complete Orion
system as a first crewed round trip
around the moon in 2022 or 2023
basically the Apollo 8 of our time
Artemis 3 will then finally land humans
on the moon in 2024 so probably as
Douglas Loverro said without first
docking to the lunar gateway should the
lunar gateway not be available by then
and since boeing and lockheed are
responsible for the lunar gateway we
know that the probability for this to
happen is really not so low and here we
have the first interesting update from
the latest artemis program PDF that the
early artemis missions will also include
a lunar terrain vehicle LTV which is
essentially an open lunar rover very
similar to the Apollo lunar Rovers used
on missions 15 to 17 even though the
PDF shows that the first mission will
still be conducted from the Gateway
we believe that it will be a direct moon flight
without the Gateway for the landing
itself a lunar lander will be used called
the human landing system HLS in the PDF
which company will build the lunar
lander is not yet known probably
Lockheed or maybe even Blue Origin the
lunar gateway maybe will play a role in
the later
Artemis missions Artemis 4 might
already include the lunar terrain
vehicle then the gateway is gradually
expanded while the surface missions will
carry out ISRU demonstrations this
stands for in situ resource utilization
which means that lunar resources are
used to build stuff directly on the moon
for example 3d printing habitat domes
with 3d printers using lunar regolith or
creating propellant from water ice
which can be found plentiful at the
lunar South Pole by the way the landing
area for the Artemis missions will
indeed be the Lunar South Pole area near
Shackleton crater
because there we have large water ice
reserves and also perpetual sunlight and
not the long lunar night of two weeks as
would be the case nearer to the equator
we think that the area surrounding
Shackleton crater will also be the site
for the establishment of the first
moon base so while now the lunar gateway is
expanding the later
Artemis missions in 2025 and 2026 will
employ a habitable mobility platform HMP
which is basically a pressurized
Rover so to speak a small mobile habitat
now the rover looks oddly familiar
doesn't it exactly on this render here
we see starship deploying at least two
such Rovers onto the surface we think
starship with its insane hundred plus
metric tons of payload capability to the
moon will deliver the HMPs and also the
first foundational surface habitat as it
is called in the PDF which is basically
a habitat shelter for long-duration
stays on the surface this
habitat shelter will be the Artemis
Base camp and can support up to four
astronauts for up to thirty possibly
even 45 days with the HMPs the
exploration range will be tens of
kilometers away from base camp
we suspect that Artemis base camp will
slowly grow in the second half of the
2020s employing more surface habitats
while at the same time the Gateway
station will also expand in order to
test longer duration stays aboard the
Gateway now this looks a lot like a
Bigelow expandable habitat module
however Bigelow is not mentioned in the
PDF even though Bigelow Aerospace is
experiencing some bad times now we would
really like to see a Bigelow BA 330
habitat module attached to the lunar
gateway NASA says that these
long-duration stays should form the
basis for testing a trip to and from
Mars but NASA of course doesn't have any
hardware capable of realistically
performing such a trip to Mars spacex's
starship will be the only vessel
capable to do so so while the whole
Artemis plan makes sense and we really
like the addition of the LTV the HMP the
Artemis base camp and the expandable
Bigelow-like habitat module for the
Gateway we think NASA's Mars plans are
extremely vague let's see if the first
Mars missions will be carried out under
a NASA logo it will depend a lot on how
soon starship will be ready for a
crewed mission we saw the cargo
configuration here delivering two HMPs but a trip to Mars will depend
on how fast starship can demonstrate the
safety for the crew configuration if
starship can safely land humans on the
moon by the mid-2020s then it's highly
likely that NASA will choose SpaceX to
carry out their future Mars missions
let's just hope for NASA that Elon won't
already have built a giant
Mars base by the time that NASA deems
it safe to carry out their Mars
missions with starship so do you agree
with us that we shouldn't be too
discouraged by all those recent starship
explosions and when do you think we can
see the first crew configuration of
starship will they be able to land on
the moon before NASA so you just watched
the JS Space report which we do every
Monday where we tell you our honest
opinions on the most recent developments
in spaceflight and space exploration
with a strong emphasis on space
politics so be sure to turn on the
notification bell so that you don't miss
any future episodes then I would say
onto the future
