Now that we could witness the historical first flight of a real SpaceX Starship
prototype with SN5 last week, what about those anomalies during the flight, and what are the next steps
at Boca Chica, how does the timeline look?
Then we want to talk about Jim Bridenstine
mentioning Starship, which was really historic,
about Doug and Bob praising Crew Dragon, about last week's starlink launch, about China's
lunar south pole and near asteroid missions, and lastly about a paper suggesting that Lava tubes
on the moon and mars might be perfect for
underground bases.
A lot to talk about as always, so stay tuned!
Now that the excitement of this historical moment,
when Starship SN5 lifted off into the blue
boca chican sky has subsided a bit, people
immediately start searching for stuff that
didn't go so well.
Ohhh, what's that, a flame at the raptor engine?
That's not good, not good
IT CERTAINLY IS A VERY BAD SIGN SPACEX HAS SOME SERIOUS ISSUES WITH THE RAPTOR, RIGHT?!
Ohhhh, and what's that here during lift-off,
hm?
Huge pieces of debris flying through the air,
this can't be good, this CAN'T
BE GOOD, SpaceX has some serious issues there
So was that stuff really so bad?
We think no.
While this is still speculation and not confirmed by Elon or SpaceX yet, There are some likely
possibilities as to what could have happened.
The debris flying through the air at the
very beginning of SN5's take-off procedure is
probably a piece of the stand.
It likely was a part of the fueling system,
because we can see some additional flame right
when it gets ripped off the pad.
So while this wasn't perfect, it's also not
super bad or a show-stopper.
We believe SpaceX will fix this issue for the
next test flight with starship
The fire on starship's raptor engine can't be a burning
leak.
If that would have been the case, SN5 would
have gone boom.
But since Starship didn't go boom, we suspect
it might have been some flammable pieces of
debris which was blasted off somewhere and
by chance attached itself to the raptor engine,
and being set on fire by the raptor engine,
thus still contuining to burn and giving the
impression that the raptor itself had a burning
fuel leak of sorts.
So we think those issues were nothing major.
And now that this giant milestone lies behind
us, what can we expect next?
For example, construction of the super heavy high bay assembly building is progressing nicely
and then a new test tank is being assembled, and most notably, stacking of SN8 has begun.
So then, what next?
Elon already said in a tweet that next we'll
see several more low altitude hops. as Elon
indicated probably first with SN6, since SN5 would first have to undergo some maintenance repair work.
It will be awesome to have two hop ready Starship
prototypes.
The first real flight will occur with the
just mentioned SN8 though.
This will be the first Starship prototype
to perform high altitude flights of up to
20km, and that will also receive a nosecone and
body flaps, which has been wonderfully visualized
in this animation by Orbital Wedge.
The timeframe for this high altitude hop will
be from the 18th of August this year, to the 18th of
February next year
Because this is the timeframe specified in
the FCC permit which SpaceX has applied for
to perform the 20km hop.
So this means there is a very good chance
that we could witness the 20km hop still this
year, but until early next year at the latest.
After that we of course will have the suborbital test flights probably in mid 2021, and hopefully
the first orbital test flights together with Super Heavy in Late 2021 or early 2022.
Because if SpaceX really wants to send cargo
Starships to Mars already in 2022, they better get
that orbital test flights going as soon as
possible.
Then they of course also have to test orbital refueling, which is an absolute key technology
which will probably also happen in 2022.
Elon himself and Gwynne Shotwell have both said, that if they wouldn't be able to send
cargo missions to mars in 2022 and humans
to mars in 2024, this would be a huge failure
for the company.
These are some extremely bold words.
and we really hope they can do it.
and of course we'll also see the dearmoon mission in 2023, and possibly a crewed moon landing in
2024, as a test for mars so to speak.
And if you want to stay up to date not only
regarding Starship and spaceflight
but also regarding other
disruptive technologies, and also want to be able to vote on the topics for our friday videos,
please consider to subscribe.
The landing of Starship on the moon will by
the way take place with or without NASA's
involvement, as Elon stated.
And talking of NASA, there was this other big event not long ago, when Doug Hurley and Bob
Behnken returned from the ISS aboard Crew Dragon.
The following speech by Elon and Jim Bridenstine
was pretty epic, and Jim Bridenstine said
something which surprised us, and filled us
with joy.
Listen to this
Wow.
NASA not only acknowledges Starship, but now
even wants Starship to succeed asap.
Jim Bridenstine really is the best NASA administrator
ever, because he seems to understand
how important Starship will be for the future of human spaceflight, he really seems to get it
Then both astronauts Bob and Doug went
on to praise Crew Dragon at the press conference
two days after their return to earth.
Doug said, quote: "I personally expected there
to be some certainly not issues with the
vehicle, but some challenges or some things
that were maybe not quite what we expected
the mission went just like the simulators.
Honestly, from start to finish, all the way,
there were no surprises.”
He added that the vehicle's attitude control
didn't even diverge from plan.
"It was rock solid."
he said.
These are quite some words of praise.
The next missions with Crew dragon will be
the Crew-1 mission, set for launch in late
September, and the crew-2 mission, set for
launch in spring 2021.
Maybe by that time, even Starliner will have
managed to perform an uncrewed testlight,
Meanwhile, the next batch of 57 Starlink satellites has been launched into orbit last week on
thursday, increasing the number of functioning Starlink satellites to now around 600
We talked in our last weeks video in more
detail what this means for the Starlink beta
test, and why Starlink is so important in the first place, link to the video in the description
In other news, now that China has successfully
launched their own mars mission on July 23rd,
what are they planning next?
Well, their big mission will be the Chang'e
5 lunar sample return mission, scheduled to
launch in November this year.
It will be China's first sample return mission,
aiming to return at least 2 kilograms of lunar
soil and rock samples back to earth.
And it will be the first lunar sample return
mission since 1976, when the sovjet probe
Luna 24 touched down on the moon, four years
after the last Apollo astronauts left the moon
Currently, China already has the Change'4
moon mission, which is by the way still ongoing.
It consists of a lander and a rover, and touched
down on the far side of the moon on the 7th
of december 2018.
The small rover yutu-2 is still roving around
on the far side of the moon
continuing to make scientific
discoveries, such as a gel like substance,
that has been discovered a year ago.
No, not aliens unfortunately, it is just glassy
material which happens to appear gel like
but is made out of regular moon minerals.
So when Change'5 sets down on the moon later
this year, China will be the only nation to
have working probes on the moon.
Chang'e 6 will be another sample return mission,
planned for 2023 or 2024.
Around the same time, the ZhengHe mission
will perform a sample return from a comet.
So China has planned quite a lot, and is slowly
but steadily working towards their ultimate
goal, which is to land humans on the
moon by around 2030, and thereafter establish
their own moon base.
But as things are progressing now, SpaceX
will have long before established a moonbase
with Starship.
And now research from a new paper, published
in the journal earth-science reviews, aims
to provide an estimate of the size of lava tubes on the moon and on mars.
We often said that underground caves or lava tubes
would be a perfect spot to build moon or mars
bases, because they would offer not only easy
access to underground water in the case of
mars, but also shield against cosmic and solar
radiation and against meteorite impacts.
Now in order to find out how big these lava
tubes are, the scientists measured the size
and gathered the morphology of lunar and Martian
collapse chains, these are collapsed lava
tubes, using digital terrain models.
They even went into lava tubes on the Canary
islands themselves.
But why the hell does this lava tube here look
like a corridor of the alienship from Prometheus?
They then compared the moon and mars data
to topographic studies about similar collapse
chains on earth.
And the result at which they arrived is pretty
mind-boggling.
They found that Mars lava tubes are 250 meters
wide on average, while moon lava tubes are
1km or even several kilometers wide, due to
the lower gravity, and in both cases tens
of kilometers long.
That is really a lot of space to build underground
bases.
It will be a fascinating time when the first
humans start to explore the depths of these intriguing
labyrinths on other worlds.
What will they see?
What will they find?
How insane must it be to be one of those brave
explorers on another world, descending down into
the complete darkness into such a lava tube.
And in the case of mars, there could even
be simple life deep down in the tubes and
caves, for example bacteria or even some simple
sponges or ferns which might have fled the
harsh getting conditions on the surface already
hundreds of millions of years ago, making
all this even more exciting.
And talking about life on Mars if you want to know how starship could help us to find
ALIENS, even intelligent aliens you might want to watch this video here.
So thanks for watching the JS Space
report and I'd say on 2 the future!
