it's just mind-boggling that so much cool stuff is happening again in spaceflight this week
First of all the good news is that the Florida
Starship prototype has survived
Dorian unscathed.
Then we of course have to talk about the ESA vs SpaceX starlink satellite collision story.
Speaking of starlink, now we know that there are actually 4 starlink launches planned for this
year, not only 2.
But it gets even crazier: SpaceX is starting to search for good landing sites on Mars for
the first Starship missions, and it seems that one region on Mars is crystallizing as the top choice.
But that is not enough, because amazing stuff is also happening in our nearest neighbor the moon
First of course, the huge news that our Indian friends successfully touched down with their
Chandrayaan-2 lander is what I would have liked to say and what maybe happened
in a parallel quantum reality
but unfortunately in this universe, all contact
to the lander was lost.
And then, a San Francisco based nonprofit
organisation called the "Open Lunar Foundation"
has come forth with plans for colonizing the moon in a few years
for...wait for it.... only 2-3 Billion USD,  that is dozens
of times cheaper than NASA's Artemis plan
So stay tuned for this amazing amount of space news this week!
Ok so let's first start with the most relieving
piece of news, namely that the Mk2 starship prototype in Cocoa Florida
has survived Hurricane Dorian virtually unscathed.
But that is not only due to the foresighted installation of wind-shelters
at the Cocoa site to protect the Starship prototype
No, but unfortunately because Dorian decided to stop
over the Bahamas for two days almost and completely wreak havoc there. the death toll
and the amount of damage down to the Bahamas is really brutal, and therefore
we somehow cannot really celebrate
that the starship hasn't received any damage.
Jixuan and me were on the Bahamas a few years
ago, and it makes us really sad to see that
the Bahamas received such a brutal amount of damage
and we therefore decided to donate to the Hurricane Dorian
relief fund, link in the description
So now that the Mk2 prototype is unaffected, the preparations to move the prototype to
Kennedy space center in September will
continue, as detailed in our last news
episode, which you can watch right here.
After being moved to the KSC, plans are to
have the first 20 km high flight as early as
October Elon time, so probably November normal
time.
We'll be in Miami in the first week of November,
so let's see if we can get lucky and will be able
to watch the launch on site and maybe even record some awesome footage for you guys.
But before that we'll probably first see
Elon's starship presentation on the 28th of
September, which will hopefully give us lots
of interesting info on potential new design
updates of Starship, and the full mission
timeline for the next years.
In other news, we had a mexican standoff
SpaceX vs ESA.
Who would chicken out fist?
Ok, so the event we're talking about is that at
11.02 AM on Monday, September 2nd, ESA’s
Aeolus Earth observation satellite had to
use its thrusters to move itself out of a
potential collision with Nr. 44 of the Starlink
Satellites.
The incident took place 320 kilometers above
Earth as the orbital paths of the two
vehicles intercepted each other.
Afterwards ESA was complaining that SpaceX
didn't respond to them, when they tried to
contact SpaceX, in order to find a common
solution for the potential collision.
The collision chance was first around 0.01%,
well below the 0.1% threshold necessary
to take action, but then apparently increased to 0.2%, suddenly well above the threshold.
So was SpaceX being the rude bully who didn't want to chicken out first?
Turns out, a bug in SpaceX's on-call paging
system prevented the Starlink operator from
seeing this probability increase.
We're glad that SpaceX didn't behave unfriendly,
but that it was just a bug, which will certainly
be updated to prevent such situations
in the future.
Speaking of Starlink, our last info was that
we would see two Starlink launches
this year, one in October and one in November
but now apparently this number has doubled to four
as new FCC permit filings by SpaceX show.
It really seems that SpaceX wants to get Starlink
operational as soon as possible.
so the new launch dates are now Starlink-1 on October
10th , Starlink-2 on October 25th, Starlink-3
on November 13th and Starlink-4 on December 8th. And actually
Starlink will be able to serve North American customers as early as
they have 360 satellites in orbit so after about six launches
which could be as early as early 2020
now global coverage of the populated world should be available after about 24 launches
or after 1440 Starlink satellites being deployed to orbit
and should Spacex keep this very aggressive launch schedule of Starlink satellites,
this could be already achieved 2 years earlier than planned already in 2021,
And we all know what that means don't we
well SpaceX will start making huge profits with the Starlink income 2 years earlier than initially planned
and that money will flow to very large extent into the Starship development.
So the plan to land STarships on the moon even without NASA's help
If it has to be suddenly doesn't seem so unrealistic anymore
Talking of Starship, our favorite rocket currently
in development, SpaceX is really starting
to get more serious on potential landing sites
on Mars.
two conditions have to be fulfilled, nay actually three conditions,
which a landing site on mars has to satisfy
first it has to be high enough north, because the higher up north, the higher the amount of water
ice below the ground, and water is of course absolutely essential for human colonization.
second
It should be far enough south, to have enough
sunlight intensity for the solar arrays needed
for powering a mars base, because radio-isotope
batteries alone won't provide enough power.
And third
The lower it lies relative to the mean surface
level of mars, the better, because then the
atmosphere is thicker, absorbing more solar
and cosmic radiation.
SpaceX requested landing site prospecting
images from the University of Arizona, tasked
with operating NASA’s JPL-built HiRISE spacecraft,
already back in 2017, when SpaceX was still
pursuing the red dragon landing idea.
SpaceX is now closing in on
a region called Arcadia Planitia in the northwestern
area of the largest volcano in the solar system,
Olympus Mons, which is towering an astounding
26 km above the neighbouring plains.
Now Arcadia Planitia fulfills all three these conditions
and is lying actually so low
as compared to the mean elevation of Mars that the atmospheric pressure there
is actually twice as high as the martian median value
so while the mean atmospheric pressure on Mars is only 0.6 kPa, which is only 0.6%
of the mean atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth
in Arcadia Planitia on the other hand it reaches 1.2 kPa of atmospheric pressure which is 1.2% of
the atmospheric pressure of earth at sea level now
This is really important in order to reduce radiation caused first by solar storms
but even more importantly by high energetic cosmic particles which then create
a secondary cascade of many high energy particles huge shower of high energy particles
if you will that pours down to the surface and causes quite immense radiation so of course
The thicker the atmosphere, the more this secondary shower of particles is absorbed
and the less the radiation on the surface one of the main great challenges in order to colonize Mars
is reducing the radiation as far as possible but there are also
Other benefits because the plains are really flat, the starship will of course be able to land easier
and because the atmosphere is thicker there as we said this will also greatly improve the Starship aero breaking
maneuvers that Starship has to perform in order to slow down when entering Mars's atmosphere
Other pros that came to our mind which we didn't read about or hear about anywhere but which we think
is quite likely is the vicinity to the northern volcanoes Olympus Mons and the
other three Tharsis volcanoes
because the likelihood that we find huge large underground lava tubes these are tubes created by
ancient flowing lava when Mars was still volcanically active is of course very beneficial for the prospect
of establishing future Mars underground bases establishing a Mars underground base
is really very good because it completely eliminates the radiation problem 100%
And there is even another benefit which is of geological interest or interest for astro biology
because Arcadia Planitia was
once the floor of the great northern ocean
that once covered the whole northern hemisphere
of mars and according to newer research was present for at least a billion years
so this would have been enough time for simple life to form in this Northern ocean
and if there is a place on Mars to find ancient Mars fossils
then Arcadia Planitia would be one of the most interesting places to start looking
oh and don't forget, the vicinity to Olympus
Mons, will surely make for a nice weekend trip
and will certainly prove to be a large tourist magnet
Tripadvisor should really already prepare to update their site to include these future Olympus Mons trips
Switching now from Mars to our nearest neighbor,
the moon, we unfortunately have the sad news
that India lost all contact to its Vikram
Lander as part of its Chandrayaan-2 moon mission.
This is really sad, because this would have
been the first mission to land in the southern
moon regions.
It would have also employed a rover that would have done many interesting science
experiments, for example searching for water ice which is of course very important for future moon bases
But we still congratulate India for this epic
mission, because it was a noble try, and we
are sure the next time they will succeed!
While on topic of the moon, the San Francisco
Based nonprofit organisation "Open Lunar Foundation"
recently came forth with some interesting
numbers.
This group consists of former silicon valley
tech people, as well as former NASA employees
and even an Astronaut, Chris Hadfield.
The goal of this nonprofit is to accelerate
the exploration and settlement of the moon.
they recently showed that building the
first lunar base can be done for as little
as 2-3 billion USD.
Now that might sound like a lot, but keep
in mind that the James Webb Space Telescope
alone already costs 10 billion USD, or even
better, the SLS Orion program has already cost
tens of billions of US dollars, and Jim Bridenstine
said not too long ago that NASA would need
an additional 20-30 billion dollars to make a
moon landing happen by 2024.
And this is only a moon landing, not building a base.
So 2-3 billion dollars for a base is actually pretty cheap.
Now how can it be done?
Well, it would be an updated version of Dr.
Robert Zubrins moon direct plan.
you know He was the guy that actually proposed the mars direct plan and wrote the book
the case for Mars back in the 90s and actually he was a very strong
influence for Elon Musk's mars plans
by the way.
so he has been a mars pioneer since decades now
But he also has a very nice moon plan 
and we have to say his moon plan is ingenious,
as it would only have to use rocket hardware that exists today namely the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy
so in Phase one
two Falcon Heavy boosters would be used to deliver the materials
for the base and other cargo to the Moon,
most importantly a propellant production facility.
and we shouldn't forget that the Falcon HEavy has a 20 ton payload capacity to the Moon
In Phase 2, one Falcon Heavy and one Falcon 9 would be used to deliver the crew to the Moon
in a fueled lunar excursion vehicle
In Phase 3, only one Falcon 9 would be used to deliver
a new crew to orbit in a Dragon 2, exchange
crews, and then refuel the LEV.
The new crew then would fly to the Moon in the LEV, which would refuel again at the lunar base
with the propellant produced on-site already
beforehand, while the Dragon 2 would return to
Earth with the previous crew.
Amazing, simple and brilliant, and doable with today's rockets
Then of course, with more and more such trips,
the base would be gradually expanded
Until at some point of course, we would then switch altogether
to Starship, because Starship of course has a much higher payload to the Moon than falcon heavy
100 tons compared to 20 tons
so this would be really low cost and possible today so we could actually have a moon base already in 2 years
A brilliant plan by Dr. Robert Zubrin, and we really hope to see it happen as soon as possible
but even if this plan wouldn't come to fruition
at the latest in the mid 2020s
we will have a moon base because Starship will land on the Moon by the latest in 2024
and with huge payloads to the moon and the funds from Starlink we are absolutely certain
that Starship will enable us to build a moon base by the mid 2020s at the latest
so what do you think about Arcadia Planitia as the future landing site
We think it is a really awesome choice so a weekend trip to Olympus Mons might actually
become a thing in 10 years right absolutely secret tip for anybody who wants
to open the first travel agency on Mars
And are you as excited as we are about all
this new moon activity ah
I certainly am because I think this will in a moon base in the not too distant future
and if you've liked our video we would be very happy if you would share it with your friends
so see you next week see you
