Great.
This is just great.
Seriously?
Yesterday, after some quiet days at the Starbase launch pad, SpaceX surprisingly removed the
hot staging ring from Booster 9.
The ring was slowly lowered to the ground by the lifting jig Marvin.
So far, we don't know exactly why, still, but it can be for access to the top of the
booster.
SpaceX are supporting its partner, Ship 25, hence why it can't hold Booster 9 unpressurized.
At one point during the stacking, they had to do a clumsy and precarious lean-out from
the Starship work platform to connect a communication cable to the side of the ship.
I suspect this may be due to there being some sort of problem with communications pass-through
from the booster to the hot stage and to Starship.
Thus, it's quicker to try with the previous approach and recertify for the next.
Overall, I believe they definitely had things they wanted to improve, but it was good enough
to launch.
Also, in rocketry, there is a difference between functional and efficient.
The reason Musk ordered them to implement those changes now rather than on future Starships
is because he received word that the Fish and Wildlife Service is going to take the
maximum amount of time, which is 130 days, to evaluate the effect of freshwater deluge
on an ecosystem.
In any case, SpaceX suddenly finds itself with more time to improve the rocket, decreasing
the chance of failure below 50%.
What's your opinion about this?
Tell us in the comment section down below.
Next up, let's try to enjoy this particular event.
And I've gotta say, it's quite the feast for the eyes.
SpaceX pushed Test Tank 26.1 beyond its limits in an intentionally explosive test at Massey's.
The prototype was filled with cryofluid until it ultimately reached its limit and burst,
spewing out billowing white nitrogen clouds.
In slow motion, it appears that fluid started bursting from the bottom first.
The tank popped and collapsed, sinking into the nitrogen plumes.
From 2019 to 2020, SpaceX has been performing a series of tests like this at Boca Chica
to refine its designs for the stainless steel Starship.
These tests involve intentionally destroying test vehicles in order to assess the design
and stainless steel strength when subjected to stressors similar to the vibrations and
atmospheric pressure a Starship would experience in flight.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk previously said,
"...Starship needs to withstand a pressure of around 6 bar to 8.5, where approximately
6 bar is needed for orbital flights and around 8.5 bar is the strength that would be safe
to carry out crewed flights."
That is why it is important to know how much pressure the stainless steel Starship tank
can withstand to ensure the spacecraft will be safe enough to carry humans aboard.
Destroying prototypes enables engineers to assess their design and determine if the stainless
steel alloy is strong enough for spaceflight or if it needs improvement.
Each test at Boca Chica takes the company closer toward actually launching a Starship
to space.
In the spirit of iterative design, SpaceX plans to conduct hundreds of test flights
and satellite deployments before launching people on board.
In regards to the current prototypes, Booster 10 has finished its chilly vacation at Massey's
and returned to the production site on September 20th.
B-10 has been then lifted off the transport stand and moved onto the stand where it will
hopefully receive engines and flight-ready modifications.
At the same time, OneShip puck shucker stand was delivered to the build site yesterday.
This is for Ship 29 to Massey's for tests.
In short, as Musk declared, it is absurd that SpaceX can build a giant rocket faster than
they can shuffle paperwork.
That is unacceptable.
In the end, we should be positive, for Starship will finally be launched, eventually.
Alright, so that was supposed to be good news, and wasn't very good towards the end.
But how about this, and hopefully this will give you something to look forward to.
SpaceX participated in the annual McGregor Founders Day parade, leaving onlookers in
awe as they showcased a colossal Starship Raptor vacuum engine.
The event marked SpaceX's first public appearance at the parade in the small town of McGregor,
which has been home to the company's rocket testing facility since 2003.
The small town has a population of approximately 6,000.
The local news outlet KWTX reported that SpaceX employees displayed the Starship Raptor
on the back of a trailer during the parade, and they cruised down the street alongside
other parade participants.
As the engine made its way through the streets of downtown McGregor, people enthusiastically
waved at the spectacle.
The Raptor vacuum engine is a crucial component of SpaceX's ambitious plans to return NASA
astronauts to the moon and send humans to Mars with Starship.
The spacecraft is equipped with three sea-level Raptors designed for atmospheric flight and
three vacuum-optimized Raptor engines designed for propulsion in space.
Every SpaceX rocket engine undergoes rigorous testing at the McGregor facility before being
shipped to facilities in California, Boca Chica, or Florida from where rockets lift off.
While McGregor remains an integral part of SpaceX's engine testing operations, the
surprise appearance of the Raptor vacuum engine in the Founders Day parade has given the town
and space enthusiasts a unique opportunity to witness a piece of SpaceX's groundbreaking
work up close.
How's that for news?
But here we are at our last bit.
There is important information for rocket companies that the Federal Aviation Administration
has proposed new regulations that would require commercial launch providers to dispose of
upper stages from their launches to mitigate the growth of orbital debris.
The FAA released the draft rule on September 20th, which will be formally published in
the Federal Register in the coming days.
That publication will start a 90-day public comment period.
The rule would require companies with FAA commercial launch licenses to choose from
one of five approaches for removing upper stages from congested orbits on future launches,
ranging from placing them into graveyard orbits or contracting with a third party to handle
the disposal.
The FAA said that the rule is motivated by the growth of orbital debris.
The proposed regulation would require commercial launch operators to choose one of five approaches
to removing upper stages from key orbits.
The most straightforward is to have the stage perform a controlled re-entry over an unpopulated
region, namely the ocean or a desert, which the regulation would require to be completed
within 30 days of launch.
A second approach would be to send the stage out of Earth's orbit completely by placing
it into a heliocentric orbit around the sun.
That would be primarily for launches sending payloads beyond Earth orbit and, the document
acknowledges, would be prohibitively costly for other missions.
The proposal would allow upper stages to go into certain disposal orbits outside the commonly
used low, medium, and geostationary Earth orbits.
Those orbits would have to be stable for at least 100 years and avoid those commonly
used orbits.
The rule would allow launch operators to elect to use uncontrolled re-entries of upper stages
provided that those stages, if left in LEO, re-enter no more than 25 years after launch.
Although, the FAA said it wanted feedback on shortening that time frame to as little
as five years and limit the risk of casualties to people on the ground.
Upper stages could alternatively be left in highly elliptical stable orbits that would
take up to 200 years to re-enter, but the proposal notes that few commercial launches
send payloads to orbits where that would be an option.
The last option would be to allow the launch operator to contract with another company
to retrieve the debris no more than five years after launch, either moving the debris into
a disposal orbit or performing a controlled re-entry.
While no such active debris removal systems are in service today, several companies are
working on such systems that include the ability to remove upper stages.
While the key section of the proposed rule governs the disposal of upper stages, it has
several other provisions.
One section limits the amount of debris from upper stages released during normal operations
of the stage, like payload adapter components.
Another sets a one-in-a-thousand threshold for the risk of a collision between space
objects at least 10 centimeters across and the upper stage over the planned orbital lifetime
of the upper stage.
Space sustainability experts at the AMOS conference here said that while they had not yet reviewed
the full proposal, they were encouraged by the FAA's approach, including giving launch
operators several options to dispose of stages in a timely manner that could help incentivize
development of active debris removal systems.
And there you have it folks.
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As always, this is Kevin from GreatSpaceX, and until next time, keep looking up!
