Space Flight Updates - Russia pullingout of ISS?

[ThreatMatrix]

Okay. This is cool. You can see the Boston Dynamics dog (Zeus) going out to check the wreckage.
at 11:57:20 on the left and 12:12:00 on the right. See time stamp bottom right.

 

[ThreatMatrix]

They moved SN5 out of the "mid"bay and rolled it the mile or so to the test stand. Then used a crane to mount it. SN5 does not have a nose cone. With the nose cone it would be a good 30% larger. now picture that on top of another rocket that is even larger and you'll have an idea of how big a complete SHS will be.


To the right you can see the SN7 test stand. Looks like they've uprighted the stand and removed the wreckage.
To the left you can see Starhopper which did a 150M hop about a year ago to prove the Raptor engines. Now it's used as shade for workers to eat lunch. And yes. The test/launch pad is alarming close to the tank farm. There's a berm that separates the two however as you can just make out it isn't very high.
Road closures are scheduled for Monday so that's likely when we will see a cryogenic test of the tanks.
Then the thrust puck ram will be removed and at least one raptor will be installed for a static test. Then hopefully it will fly as early as July 4th.

 

[ThreatMatrix]

There have been two Falcon 9's sitting on launch pads ready to go for a week. Starlink #9 and GPS III.
The military is replacing their GPS satellites and this is the third such launch. It's also the first launch that I've noticed that the fairings had the Space Force logo on them. So that's cool. The launch was successful. Booster landed on JRTI (Just Read The Instructions). They didn't even bother to try to catch the fairings electing to fish them out of the sea. I don't know if they've totally given up on catching fairings or not. They've had very limited success. But SpaceX plans to retire Falcon 9 anyway so they might have decided to stop sinking money into fairing catches.
Starlink #9 is now scheduled for July 8th.
Anasis-II (A Korean Satellite) is scheduled for July 13th. So SpaceX will have had three launches in two weeks.
The big launch of the month will be the Perseverance Mars Rover July 30th aboard an Atlas V rocket. Should be quite a sight.
Launch at 20 minutes with booster landing.

 

[SeabeeGator]

@ThreatMatrix when they announced space Force was recruiting, I looked into a transfer. Unfortunately, they’re relying on Air Force CEs for their construction needs. Was really hoping they were going to get their own construction officers.

 

[ThreatMatrix]

@ThreatMatrix when they announced space Force was recruiting, I looked into a transfer. Unfortunately, they’re relying on Air Force CEs for their construction needs. Was really hoping they were going to get their own construction officers.

Yeah man. If they had the Space Force back in the day I would've joined in a heartbeat. It's time to form the Space Force SEABEES. The SPACEBEES!.
Who's gonna build **** on the moon, right? One of the most interesting things I hope to see is construction on the moon.

 

[SeabeeGator]

Yeah man. If they had the Space Force back in the day I would've joined in a heartbeat. It's time to form the Space Force SEABEES. The SPACEBEES!.
Who's gonna build **** on the moon, right? One of the most interesting things I hope to see is construction on the moon.

In total agreement. Drop us off with a few pallets of AM02 matting and a space grader and we’ll have temporary landing pads done that day.

 

[ThreatMatrix]

Drove to the beach this morning and as I go over the causeway I got a cool site that greeted me. So I pulled into the parking lot of gators dockside at the port and snapped this picture of a booster that had returned and is getting ready to be shipped out for reuse.

 

[ThreatMatrix]

SpaceX has been suffering from "no-go" fever of late. They've had two Falcon 9's ready to launch for weeks but it took until today to launch the Anasis II mission.

Booster landing around 10 minutes.
This payload is a Korean military satellite. Notably they used the same booster that was used to launch Doug and Bob to the ISS. The mission had many scrubs caused by the 2nd stage which ironically is the only part of the rocket that is not reused. But they did manage to catch both fairings. Hopefully they'll post some video later.
Next up is a Starlink launch (which has already had some scrubs) that has also been sitting on the pad ready to go but Anasis took precedence.
Back in Boca Chica we have been waiting for weeks for the first hop of a Starship prototype. But again SpaceX has been overly cautious and although have had 6-7 dates scheduled they've been all scrubbed. They did get a pressure test in 3-4 weeks ago which usually leads to a quick static fire and then launch but it's been slow progress.
SN5 sits on the new launch stand ready to go. A new stand had to be built after SN4 blew up. And the new launch pad appears to be a proper launch platform with proper plumbing, methane recovery, a water deluge system and other safety features. I think they are very hesitant now to blow things up on the pad so they've been very cautious.
Today finally they did not cancel and appeared to run some tests of the water deluge system and the metnhane recovery system. Hopefully tomorrow we will see a pre-burner and static fire test. With the hop to follow in a few days.

This month is the Mars window. The UAE succesfully launched a climate satellite earlier in the week. China will be launching a rover in a few days and, of course, the US will be launching the Perseverance Rover which include a drone copter that is to fly around Mars peering into the backyards of Martians.

I should mention that Rocket Labs had a failure which probably contributed to SpaceX's caution. Rocket Labs is the little rocket company that could. They launch small carbon fiber rockets on 3D printed engines delivering small satellites to high orbit. There rockets are also unique in that the engines do not use a pre-burner to spool up the turbo pumps instead using electric motors. The motors are powered by batteries which when depleted are ejected to lose weight. And therein was apparently the problem. The second stage batteries never came on line for as of yet unknown reasons. So the 2nd stage never fired and the payload fell back to earth. Rocket Labs goal is to launch 2-4 times a month but this no doubt will set them back for a while.

 

[SeabeeGator]

@ThreatMatrix a few folks in my class today worked on that - they're at Ball Aerospace. They were talking about it earlier.

 

[ThreatMatrix]

Universal Pictures is negotiating to film first movie in space -Starring Tom Cruise aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon
"Universal Pictures is reportedly in negotiations to film the first movie in outer space, starring Tom Cruise, according to a report by Variety The film will have a production budget of $200 million and will be directed by Doug Liman. The movie still does not have a script yet; “Cruise could earn somewhere between $30 million and $60 million, according to insiders."
SpaceX is charging $55M per seat for two tourists in 2021. Presumably Universal will have to send a film crew so at least 4 people. That's $220 million. NASA only charges $35,000 a night so that's cheap. But it doesn't matter to SpaceX how many people fly. The launch costs the same. They reuse the booster and capsule. They just lose the 2nd stage and capsule trunk. A launch costs Spacex maybe as little as $20M and as much as $50M.

 

[Back Alley Gator]

I guess this thread is as good a place as any to share this very cool video I watched the other day. It's a compilation of 4k images from the surface of Mars. Looks pretty awesome on the bigscreen at home.

So its pretty much like Arizona.

 

[ThreatMatrix]

At 7:50AM, on a beautiful Florida east coast morning a ULA ATLAS V rocket strapped with four SRBs lept off the pad carrying the Perseverance Rover. Forty-five minutes later the Centaur 2nd stage fired its engines for the injection burn that will take it to Mars. The launch came with a little added pressure in that both Chi-nah and the UAE had successfully launched missions of their own to Mars earlier in the Month.
The Perseverance rover will have upgrades learned from the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers including improved wheels and high definition video cameras. Perseverance will also take core samples that will be saved in order to be retrieved by a later mission and returned to earth. In addition the payload includes the Ingenuity helicopter that will be able to fly short hops over the surface.
Launch at around 48 minutes.


ETA: February 18th 2021

 

[ThreatMatrix]

And.... Starship SN5 finally static fires meaning a hop will be in a few days.
SN4 blew up May 29th due to a faulty quick disconnect that allowed methane to ignite. The explosion destroyed the test stand. SpaceX immediately went to work building a new test stand however the new one was an upgraded, big boy stand. The SN4 test stand was no more than a few I beams and make shift plumbing. They took their time with the new stand and included a new quick disconnect system, water deluge and methane reclamation. Previously they burned the methane boil off from a flare stack that was exciting to see but a bit wasteful.
So since May 29th we've been waiting for the new test stand to be completed and finally on June 25the they rolled SN5 out to the stand. They fairly quickly did a liquid nitrogen pressure test so we have been waiting for this static fire test ever since. Given that SN4 had already static fired we thought this would happen soon. However there were problems with the new GSE (Ground Support Equipment) that kept delaying the test.
Finally last week Elon tweeted that he expected to static fire and hop within the week however Hurricane Hannah happened. Then on Monday we saw that Elon's plane was on it's way to Boca Chica - yeah the community follows Elon's plane like we follow the UAA planes during coaching searches. Elon finally tweeted that they were going for a static fire test and we went well into the night. They got all the way to attempting to start the preburner but then scrubbed. Elon tweeted that a "spin valve" failed to open and that there was a problem with the TVC (Thrust Vector Control) system.
The "spin valve" is in the Raptor engine and replaced quickly. Ironically the TVC system is powered by a Tesla motor and that seemed to take a long time to fix. Finally yesterday we saw the plane come back and we thought ELON was on board but the plane only stayed for about an hour and left. Speculation was that it delivered a Tesla part.
SpaceX doesn't give any information about what is happening other than a random Elon tweet so the community just watches the facility 24/7. They're are cameras in the area that are maintained by YouTubers and after all this time they have figured out what is happening by what they see happening at the pad.
They've come up with a checklist:
1) Road Closure announcement puts everyone on alert.
2) Then they wait for the pad to clear of personal and vehicles
3) Road barricades go up and satellite dishes point towards pad. There's a camera watching that area.
4) Rocket gets pressurized. They can tell when it gets pressurized because the steel has dents in it. So when they see the dents disappear they know it's been pre presuurized,
5) Then venting starts to happen in the tank farm as they are pumped up in prep for fueling. There's a map of which tank contains what.
6) The rocket starts to vent and frost over as fuel is loaded.
7) A great deal of venting occurs from the bottom as the Raptor engine is chilled. (they got this far Monday night).
8) Warning siren goes off alerting local residents to come out of there homes to avoid flying glass in case of a RUD.
9) Finally a static fire.

Static Fire happens at around 3:30. (incidentally this particular you tuber is gay and doesn't know it yet).

 

[ThreatMatrix]

Hop tomorrow. Presumably after Doug and Bob splash down early afternoon.

 

[crosscreekcooter]

Beam me up Scotty

 

[deuce]

One minor correction ......... you said "he doesn't know he's gay yet".......... I'm pretty sure he knows and his Mom knows for sure!

 

[Back Alley Gator]

Dragon capsule has returned safely....and someone with a Trump 2020 flag on his boat was there to greet them. lol.

 

[deuce]

Got a little toasty around the edges........

 

[ThreatMatrix]

Watch Live: 150M hop today.
Scrubbed yesterday. Got as far as preburner spin up. Tank Farm venting so could be soon

 

[ThreatMatrix]

After a scrub yesterday and a scrub this morning it finally flew.
On only one engine (eventually it will have six) and without a nose cone (there's a 22 tonne mass simulator on top).

This may well be the next vehicle to land humans on the moon and the first to land humans on Mars.