141 | SpaceX Starship SN9 Launch – Heat Shield Trouble – NASA Perseverance Landing

Kind thanks go to Surfshark VPN for sponsoring today's episode! Today, amongst other things, I'll explain to you, what to expect next from SpaceX's Starship Serial Number 9, what's the trick with the Starship heat shields and where Perseverance is right now and what can we expect for the landing. My name is Felix, and I am your host for today's episode of What about it!? And as always, there has been a lot going on in the space industry lately, so let's dive right in! Starship Updates We're back and it feels good! 2020 was quite the year and only 12 days into the new one, it's already shaping up to be even crazier. It feels like the whole space industry is being invigorated with a new sense of enthusiasm and creativity. And it's hard to grasp, what SpaceX achieved in 2020 alone. Doug and Bob riding the Dragon to the ISS, Cargo Dragon getting a 50% storage increase, Starships taking flight three times, even though there were many problems during the test campaigns. We've made a video to commemorate SpaceX's success in the past year showing the work of many who documented the history while it happened. Click the info box or the link in the description, if you missed it. But can this success continue or was it just a coincidence that all this happened in only one year? As said before, 2021 is 12 days old by now and frankly, it seems like the space industry is driving to make it even crazier than the last year. When it comes to SpaceX, Boca Chica Texas is gearing up for the next Starship flight right now and it is going through its paces in preparation to repeat one of the greatest moments in recent spaceflight history. It's going for the second flight and it will try to improve on Serial Number 8. Serial Number 9 is currently sitting on test pad B at the Boca Chica launch facility. Mauricio from RGB Area Photography took these pictures on his last flyby on January 1st. And if you're not a flight supporter yet, go check out his Patreon and Twitter for more information. Even though we're only 12 days into the new year, SpaceX has already performed an ambient pressure test on Starship Serial Number 9 followed by a cryogenic pressure test and some very impressive RCS thruster tests. What can be pointed out here is that these RCS thruster firings overall look stronger compared to the tests done on Starship Serial Number 8. It's unknown, if SpaceX improved this system or if they're just putting Serial Number 9 through a more vigorous test campaign. On January 6th, SpaceX then did a first static fire with their latest prototype. We're talking 6 days into the new year here. Even though ignition occurred, the static fire was very short. No immediate problems were seen from the outside and the prototype was undamaged. And it's unknown, what caused the short static fire, but one possible reason could be engine problems. These are some wonderful pictures taken by Mary for NASA Spaceflight and they show Raptor engine 45 being delivered to the SpaceX Starship construction site. This shows once again, that not only Boca Chica is working on Starship technology. The engine production facility in Hawthorne, California, where this prototype comes from, is working overtime as well. Whereas on Starship Serial Number 8's 12.5 kilometer flight, Raptor engine 42 was the latest of the three engines to power the launch, SpaceX's engine department was already further along, constantly improving and iterating on the design. And here's another good picture to show SpaceX's progress. We're in Mauricio's plane again. Taken on January 1st, it shows the mid bay, where SpaceX currently assembles Starships. Inside the mid bay, it shows Starship Serial Number 10 on the left and the beginnings of Serial Number 11 on the right. In front it also shows Starship Serial Number 6, which has been sitting there since it did the 150 meter hop. Where on January 1st, Starship Serial Number 10 was still just a tank section, it's fully assembled, including flaps on Mary's pictures taken only a few days later. Serial Number 11 next to it and not visible in this picture has the whole tank section assembled by now. And Starship Serial Number 6 by now has been partly disassembled to make room for more prototypes. Where other launch providers build one prototype in a year, SpaceX is making a few per month right now. It's mind-boggling to see and it's another indicator for how exciting 2021 will be. Here we can see Starship Serial Number 15's common dome skirt. It's the hull segment in the middle of the tank section. One thing in particular is very interesting about it. Do you see those little pins sticking out of the hull? We've looked at them together many times now. Those of course are heat shield attachment pins and they can be found on Serial Number 9 as well. SpaceX's current solution for attaching heat tiles to Starship hulls, which can also be seen in the picture and again in a different layout compared to previous prototypes. These heat tiles will be needed to shield the Starship from the tremendous heat in front of the Starship on re-entry, since when returning from low Earth orbit, Starship will be initially traveling at about 7.8 kilometers per second Mach 23 or 28,000 kilometers per hour. As a fun fact, this heat is not created by friction caused by the air flowing around the Starship really fast. It is created because the air in front of the Starship is strongly compressed very suddenly. This causes the air to heat up and in return makes a heat shield for any Starship wanting to return from orbit a necessity, since stainless steel has a melting point of around 1500 degrees Celsius. Back to the common dome skirt for Serial Number 15, we can see that it's completely covered with these attachment pins. First neighbor Maria Pointer recently took a very interesting video at the shipyard, showing a worker and a robotic arm doing some welding on a Starship hull segment inside one of the large construction tents. The company producing these robotic arms is called KUKA and they are one of the world's leaders in this technology. And robotic welding is being done whenever human precision would not be enough and when a repeating task done over and over again is needed. Such as for attaching thousands upon thousands of pins to a Starship hull. There's one problem though. Stainless steel changes its density when welded. While being heated up it expands and after cooling down it contracts. It contracts even further down though than before the welding as the atoms get closer together. This changes the property of the hull and makes welding difficult on a large scale. Remember the old days when Starships looked like this? This is Starship Mark 1 and it has wrinkles and dents all over the hull. That is caused by welding. On Serial Number 9 though the picture looks very different. A smooth hull with smaller dents and fewer wrinkles. This was achieved by reducing the number of welds needed. The rings are one piece now. The welds are much smaller. And if SpaceX now welds thousands of pins to the outside of the hull, they need to find a way to mitigate the deformation effect on the metal. That and testing the attachment and the tiles for strength are the reasons, why we see different heat shield layouts on every single Starship prototype right now. And Serial Number 15 will test three rows of seven tiles each with the last row being made of half tiles. Starship Serial Number 9 on the other hand is testing a larger area of tiles and the attachment pins on the upper two rings seem darker. This could be caused by different weld settings. This is iterative design at its best. Every aspect is tested in many different ways. Brandon has provided me with his latest Starship prototype diagram. A link to his Twitter can be found in the description. Wonderful work! Here we can see all the different prototypes currently in development. Serial Number 9 with cryo tests and a first static fire done already. Serial Number 10 freshly assembled and therefore shown in blue. Serial Number 11 with only a little assembly work left to do. Serial Number 12 largely done but still in separate segments. Then comes an odd break in the line. Serial Number 13 and 14 seem to have halted progress. This might be an indicator that SpaceX has changed the design so much already that 13 and 14 as initially planned are not being continued. On the other hand, it could also be a sign that they are test tanks as we've seen them before. Starship Serial Number 16 and 17 are progressing as well and the booster right now seems to be on hold. On hold does not mean that there's no progress being made though. SpaceX still seems to be working on hull design. These pictures taken by Mary show booster development rings. Those are rings that are not meant for stacking but for testing different things like weld techniques or hull design. SpaceX still seems to be looking for something to continue the build of booster number 1. An important puzzle piece must be missing. Switching back into Mauricio's plane once more and to the launch site on January 1st, we can still see the aftermath of the Starship Serial Number 8 flight. By now, most of it is gone though. The landing pad has been cleared and the Serial Number 8 nose cone is gone as well. Rest in pieces, Serial Number 8. Starship Serial Number 8 left quite the mark on the landing pad when it had its rapid unscheduled disassembly in December. SpaceX decided to cut the damaged part out. Repairs have already begun and everything is getting ready for the next launch. One more static fire and we should be good to go. So, when is that going to happen? It's the same game as with Starship Serial Number 8. It's really hard to predict right now. As this is prototyping, things tend to change and not go as planned. The WAI team needs your support! Give the video a like, subscribe and share it to show the YouTube algorithm that you appreciate the content! Want to give them more direct support? Consider becoming a Patron or a YouTube member and get awesome perks like access to our Discord server, where I discuss space topics with the community every day. Do you know about the WAI Warehouse? Shop for your next Starship shirt or grab our famous Raptor blueprint shirt and countless other shirts made by Space Nerds for other Space Nerds! Links can be found in the description! You Rock! As of recording the episode, there are test days set for today and tomorrow, but right now SpaceX is also hindered by the local weather in Boca Chica. Wind gusts and rain have kept SpaceX from testing before and it's something to keep an eye on, if you want to get good at predicting test dates. The rest of the week looks better though and that's at least a good sign. We'll have to wait for more test dates to be set. As a side note, before we finish this Starship update, Elon Musk achieved one more milestone in these first 12 days of 2021 besides already having one Falcon 9 launch in the books for the new year. He officially became the richest man in the world, leaving Jeff Bezos from Amazon and Blue Origin behind. Besides it being an impressive achievement, it also means that the resources for future developments are more than secured right now. Innovation and good leadership seem to pay off after all. Well done and congratulations from all of us! Percy on Final Approach There's one more major milestone approaching fast or technically it's going away fast depending on your viewpoint. Perseverance, the latest NASA rover to explore Mars, is on its final approach. We have 37 days left. That's right. Percy is almost there and it will be one of the most nerve-wracking live streams you can imagine. Perseverance launched on July 20th last year and has since then traveled towards Mars at a blistering speed of over 80,000 kilometers per hour. Right now it is 141 million kilometers away from Earth and on final approach to Mars, which is only a little over 8 million kilometers away by now. Roughly one and a half months from now on February 18th, Perseverance will arrive at Mars and prepare itself for the final step of the journey. After jettisoning its trunk, it will attempt a landing similar to how the Curiosity rover did it, but with a few differences. It will for the first time provide full video and audio coverage of the landing. We will see Mars get closer, the parachute deployment sequence, the descent through the atmosphere, the heat shield separation. Then we'll see the sky crane separate from the back shield and continue a powered descent until it finally lowers the rover down to the surface and flies away to a safe crash distance. The whole 9 yards and NASA wants to broadcast it. This is a first. On every other Mars landing we saw some pictures at most. Perseverance though will record it all and transmit it back to Earth. Of course with a communication delay between Perseverance and Earth of around 7 minutes at the time of landing. Due to the communication delay, the landing will have to be completely automated and we won't know, if it worked for those 7 minutes. Once the signal arrives on Earth though, it will be the first ever full recording of a spacecraft landing on another planet. Curiosity for example filmed only the last 2 minutes of its descent and only at 5 frames per second. Perseverance will provide a full HD recording of the full 7-minute re-entry and landing phase including audio. That's going to be amazing. Can't wait for it. On October 19th of last year for example, Perseverance tested its audio equipment and recorded a 60-second audio clip of what it sounds like on the inside of the craft while traveling through deep space. What you just heard was the whirring sound of the rover's heat rejection fluid pump, protecting it from overheating on the journey to Mars. And the same microphone will record the descent for us all to hear. February 18th. Mark it on your calendars. We'll of course provide a live stream and watch it together with you. Mars rover landing. 7 minutes of Terra. Take 2. This should be good. Here's to 2021. Now, let's have a look at today's sponsor and don't click away just yet. The deal is actually pretty sweet. Whether it's data and identity theft, traceability, intrusive advertising or geo-blocking, Surfshark VPN encrypts your data and enables you to change your virtual location. Have you ever been greeted with a message that this site or video is not available in your country? Streaming services like Netflix or Disney Plus for example have vastly different libraries in different countries. Surfshark makes you outsmart them easily by removing the so-called geo-block from your account. Just activate your VPN, change your virtual location, refresh the page, and you're good to go for countless more Netflix evenings. Use my code to get 83% off plus 3 extra months for free and at the same time support What about it!? Surfshark offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so there's no risk. Surf with your own rules! Links in the description! Today's Patreon and YouTube Member shout out goes to Hannes Respondek, Michael Warbin, Vance Poisin, Simon Hunt, E. Stein Espensen, Charles Tacker, SnoopyDJ, Janice, Paul Norwood, John Peters, Paul Dean, Neil LeGault, David Lane, Kurt Angles and many others. You Rock! The community is growing. Support on one hand and on the other the motivation to keep us all going from episode to episode. Thank you so much for all you're doing for the WAI family and don't forget to join us on our Discord server. See you there! The last words go out to the team and this time I want to make it a thank you to all of you again. We have rocked so much in 2020 and it is an honor for me to be part of this team. Working on all fronts to make the group better and to improve on a constant basis. Thank you so much for letting me do this together with you. You Rock!