China's Long March Brutally EXPLODED, Why? SpaceX will Try to Catch Starship Flight 14 Booster...

On a peaceful night, this is what startled me. It was the insane explosion of China's Long March 7A. So, what happened? Back in the US, the surprises are coming from SpaceX. They might have comped the booster on Flight 14, creating a double catch. Is this even possible? Meanwhile, Rocket Lab just unveiled a unique and unprecedented launch platform. Let's explore all this on today's episode of Great SpaceX. Clearly, when it comes to China, we can't predict what they'll do. Just a few days ago, they successfully landed a rocket using a wire. Not exactly a wire, but a series of wires. Which you can find on this channel to watch later in this video. But today, they've had a disaster. That's certainly what makes aerospace so exciting. So, subscribe to our channel where you'll always get the earliest and most important updates on SpaceX and the aerospace industry. Returning to the latest event, China's explosion involved a Long March 7A rocket. The launch was conducted by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The flight lifted off at 8 a.m. Eastern from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island. Ooh, Hainanese chicken. The liftoff went smoothly with the assistance of the engines, which included a main booster and four side boosters. I'll talk about its structure later. With that activation, the launch pad was visibly engulfed in smoke and dust. It's unclear if it was because I was so impressed by the Starship launch, but I found the Chinese rocket to create a visually oppressive atmosphere. Skipping that, the first few dozen seconds of the flight went smoothly, but things didn't last long. While we were waiting for the stage separation moments, the incident occurred. From the footage below, we see that the bright spot created by the engine became smaller and smaller as the booster rose higher and higher. But then, at 1 minute and 25 seconds, 85 seconds after liftoff, the smoke suddenly intensified. And just two seconds later, that small bright spot unexpectedly grew larger and spread out like a blooming flower. Just kidding. It was a powerful explosion accompanied by a stunned wow from the viewers. It quickly spread into a giant fireball with black smoke. In the close-up explosion footage I showed at the beginning of the video, you can see many burnt fragments scattered around. The dark background of the area further accentuated the explosion, though of course it made observation more difficult. Clearly, with such an explosion, the mission failed with the vehicle and payload completely lost. The payload was the Zhongxing-4B satellite, a communications satellite on the Geostationary Transfer Orbit, providing telecommunications and broadband internet services to support the Chinese military. Following such an incident, there are two major tasks to consider. First, China will have to examine the surrounding area to see if any debris or fuel fell, and then clean it up. What is recovered will be relevant to the second task, which is investigating the cause. For now, we can analyze this from a visual perspective. From closer footage of the rocket released on X, presumably taken from slow motion video, the problem is as follows. First, when the problem occurred, the second stage was the first to show signs of abnormality. The entire stage was strangely bent, and from that deformation, you can see it exploded. You can see that it exploded. The explosion originated in the second stage, while the first stage below remained intact and functioning normally for a brief one or two seconds. Then the explosion spread to the first stage, resulting in the big bang you saw. Currently, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has not issued a definitive statement on the incident. But based on what has been shown, I believe the fault lies with the upper stage's fuel tank, possibly due to pressure misalignment or a leak. The reasons for these faults could be temperature or high aerodynamic pressure, considering the explosion occurred quite close to Max Q, the most challenging phase for the rocket during ascent. With such a problem, investigating, confirming the issue, and resolving the incident will be quite difficult, making it hard for Long March Version 7 to return to service soon, and potentially affecting the launch schedules of related rockets. Interestingly, this event received a response from Elon Musk. He said, I hope they have a speedy recovery. It's still a respectful and encouraging message even from a competitor, especially from the CEO of SpaceX. But the focus remains on the phrase, More than anyone, Musk and SpaceX understand this best. We may have been fooled too much by seeing SpaceX launch and land rockets so easily. But to achieve that, they had to overcome failures in the early stages by embracing continuous testing, thereby identifying problems and making improvements. That is the philosophy that has brought them to a leading position in the industry. For the Long March 7A, this was actually its 18th flight. Its first launch took place in 2020, but that also failed with an explosion, caused by engine problems during stage separation. This time, it didn't even reach that stage. Overall, this is China's fourth failure this year after the Long March 3B and Ceres 2 in January and the Tianlong 4 in April. This is clearly a time for China to reconsider its missile. In terms of design, the Long March 7A is a variant of the Long March 7, 60 meters tall, with three stages by combining the first two stages of the Long March 7 with a third stage using a YF-75 hydrolox engine. As mentioned, the first stage has one core booster and four side boosters. The first stage uses YF-100 engines, and the second stage of the rocket uses YF-115. Both engines run on kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel. Kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel. The rocket's takeoff thrust is approximately 730 tons. It can carry 13 to 17 tons to low Earth orbit, 7 tons to geostationary transfer orbit, and 5.5 tons to sun-synchronous orbit. Sounds pretty complicated, right? But it's China. So, do you think this rocket could return to service soon? Let me know with a yes or a no in the comment section down below. In contrast to China's situation, SpaceX is presenting an interesting and unexpected prospect. In recent updates, we all know SpaceX aims to launch the Starship into orbit and then catch it using the Mechazilla arms. This is a crucial step to bring Starship to full reusability. However, many predictions suggest a super-heavy booster for two reasons. First, the booster still encountered some problems in its two most recent flights, possibly due to overly rigorous testing. The engine is at the heart of the issue. Second, SpaceX only has one tower. Based on previous catching attempts, it's unclear whether SpaceX can catch the booster, then quickly lower it and refurbish it within an hour to immediately catch the Starship. Therefore, many speculate that a two-stage catching will only happen when the Pad 1 tower returns to operation. But no, SpaceX seems to be aiming for a surprise by accepting this challenge. This is evident in a recent Federal Communications Commission update. Their updated license mentions the communication index for the Starship Flight 14 suborbital booster. In the Purpose of Operations section, the FCC wrote, The first-stage booster will return to the launch site. Woo! Normally, without SpaceX's plans or proposals, the FCC probably wouldn't have made such unexpected changes. This sparked unprecedented excitement, making Flight 14 the most important flight to date, as it hopes to get Starship into orbit and then land both stages. Of course, we still have to talk about the difficulties. Engine problems in the booster remain a major concern. On Flight 12, one engine failed after liftoff, then experienced trouble with boostback burn and landing burn. By Flight 13, the engine seemed more stable. But problems still occurred in the final stage near the water's edge. If we consider the catching effort, it's the moment the booster navigates and lands on the chopsticks, which requires extreme precision and stability. So, is it ready for catching on Flight 14? Additionally, pressure will be on Chopsticks Pad 2, as it will have to receive two stages of Starship within an hour to an hour and a half. The key is that its parts must not malfunction or allow for rapid refurbishment. On this basis, the SpaceX team needs to work very quickly to get the booster off the platform to be ready to catch the ship. There are many challenges, and it seems SpaceX is willing to take a gamble this time. If successful, it could take the ship to a new level. So, do you expect this to happen? Let me know with a number 2 if you believe it will happen, and a number 1 if you think otherwise. And now, let's talk about Rocket Lab's special system. Specifically, Rocket Lab plans to improve launch capabilities with a new portable spaceport system called Ghost. Rocket Lab representatives said in a statement on August 10th, Ghost, short for Global Hypersonic and Orbital Spaceport Technology, turns the company's Electron and Haste rockets into a launch-anywhere, launch-anytime capability for multi-launch flight campaigns and critical national security missions. Packaged entirely within standard shipping containers, Ghost deploys complete rockets, launch infrastructure, ground support, and range control systems anywhere in the world, they added. Electron is Rocket Lab's workhorse orbital rocket, giving small satellites dedicated rides to the final frontier. The expendable 59-foot-tall launcher debuted with a test flight in 2017 and has 83 missions under its belt to date. And its full name suggests, Haste, or Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron, is a suborbital version of Electron that customers use to test various technologies in the hypersonic flight environment. Haste first flew in June of 2023 and has flown nine times to date, most recently in June of this year. Rocket Lab currently flies from two different launch sites, one on the North Island of company founder and CEO Peter Beck's native New Zealand and one at Wallops Island in Virginia. But the company recently announced plans to fly out of Alaska's Pacific Spaceport Complex as well, and Ghost will expand its launch footprint even further. Beck said Electron and Haste revolutionized small orbital launch and hypersonic testing. Now we're making it easier to deploy them where they're needed most, whether that's for missile defense testing or sovereign orbital launch capability. We've mastered the art of building launch sites. Now we're making them deployable worldwide, he added. Rocket Lab intends to deploy its two planned pads at the Pacific Spaceport Complex using Ghost, Beck said during the call. The company was inspired to develop the portable spaceport system to meet the needs of a Haste customer, who expressed a desire for Rocket Lab to be a little bit more mobile than they are. Rocket Lab currently flies out of two pads at its New Zealand site and one at Wallops, though it has built a second pad at the Virginia facility to accommodate launches of its coming Neutron rocket. Neutron will be bigger and more powerful than Electron and partially reusable as well. Its first stage is designed to return to Earth for recovery and reflight, like SpaceX's Falcon 9. Rocket Lab originally wanted to fly Neutron for the first time in 2024, but the new launcher has not yet left the ground. The company is on target to deliver the first Neutron to that Wallops pad in the fourth quarter of this year, Beck added. So let's see what Rocket Lab can achieve with this exciting system. In any case, folks, if you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to leave a like, subscribe to GreatSpaceX, and ring the notification bell so you never miss the latest updates on Starship, SpaceX, and humanity's exciting journey into the future of space exploration. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next one.