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On today's episode, we are getting
into the latest space news, including SpaceX

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has built a new launchpad for starship
Falcon Heavy, completes its biggest mission yet,

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and Sierra Space wins a Space Force
contract for a secret engine design.

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This is the space race. Progress
at the launch facilities at the SpaceX testing

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grounds in Bokachika, Texas hit another
milestone on July twenty eighth, when the

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company technicians completed a full strength test
of their newly installed water deluge system.

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SpaceX observers have been following the progress
of the deluge system's construction for the last

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several weeks now. The huge metal
plate forming the central showerhead of this system,

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as well as the outward plates protecting
the water hookups, were installed at

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the end of June and into the
beginning of July, causing a fair amount

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of excitement. A lot of speculation
had been buzzing around the community, and

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folks like Ryan Hanson were rightfully happy
to see that their thoughts on the device

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and its proportions were mostly correct.
Then, on July seventeenth, before the

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apparatus had been completely installed, the
SpaceX team conducted their first test, and

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even with a missing water tank.
The plates put out an impressive flood of

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water. The very next week,
on July twenty sixth, the remaining tank

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and pressure vessels were installed and linked
into the last took ups under the orbital

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launch mount. In the background of
all this was the testing of Booster nine.

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More on that later, but the
important thing to note here is that

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SpaceX had a launch candidate booster on
the stand above their new delution system,

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an opportunity which was too good to
pass up, and on July twenty eighth

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they turned the water on. We
were treated to some great footage from SpaceX

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themselves, and in it we can
see that at full power, the delue

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system works more or less the same
way the simulations predicted it would. A

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colossal amount of water is shot upwards
and outwards from the center of the om,

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avoiding hitting the engines of the booster
sitting directly above the plate, even

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though the water is jetting out of
the system so hard that it was shot

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clear over the tank farm's protective berm. Luckily, the site's drainage seems to

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have taken care of everything just fine, so this was a very successful test.

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The Deluche system is fully operational.
Now. Whether or not it's able

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to effectively manage the liftoff thrust of
super Heavy will have to be discovered in

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testing. During the April twentieth flight
test, super Heavy's massive array of Raptor

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V two engines tore a deep crater
into the launchpad under the om, launching

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concrete debris into the launch tower and
much further afield. SpaceX had designed a

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water cooled steel plate to sit under
the OLM to absorb all the heat and

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pressure, but it hadn't been built
in time for the test, and the

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engineering team underestimated the damage Super Heavy
was capable of. Now in their defense,

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the physics behind rockets at plumes and
cratering is still being worked out by

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leading physicists in the field, so
it's not an easy thing to predict by

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any stretch. The basic premise is
that a steel plate on concrete could likely

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take the beating that an array of
Raptor V two's would dish out. The

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heat is another matter, but the
water should take care of that in theory,

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and now that we've seen it in
action, it's hard to think that

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this reverse showerhead idea won't do the
trick. But we won't have to guess

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for long, as the next thing
the SpaceX team is likely gunning for is

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a static fire right on the OLM, and given how quickly the rest of

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the site's work is progressing, it
seems possible that we might be seeing one

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of these by the end of August
at the latest. The build team needs

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to let that concrete fully cure,
but with the deluge plate working they may

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not have to worry about that so
much. That being said, there are

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a couple of other things standing in
the way of a static fire and of

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course another test launch. The first
is testing the OM and booster systems.

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The launch apparatus took a beating on
April twentieth, and the repairs have gone

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well, but still need to be
tested to make sure they are operational.

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Going with that, the new launch
Candidates nine has to go through the usual

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process to ensure it can handle being
the next booster to try and get Starship

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into space. On July twenty third, Booster nine was put through cryogenic proof

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testing, the test where the team
fills the boosters fuel tanks with liquid nitrogen

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to test pressure, stability, and
the plumbing. Some of you might remember

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that the Super Heavy uses liquid methane, but doing a pressure cryotest with such

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a volatile fuel is not exactly the
smartest thing to do on your only launch

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apparatus, so they use nitrogen,
which, while not being quite as dense

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as methane, won't explode if something
bad happens during the tanking procedures. Another

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blocker to launch is the modifications needed
for hot staging the process. SpaceX has

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recently decided to add to Starship a
large ring events and tank shields will sit

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in between the first and second stage, allowing Starship's engines to start up before

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fully separating from its super heavy booster, leading to a smoother separation maneuver.

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But Booster nine and Ship twenty five
don't have this modification, and the quick

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disconnect for the fuel line on the
launch tower has already been raised to accommodate

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for the new height, so SpaceX
is going to have to install these events

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before even committing to a full wet
dress rehearsal with the new stack. So

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where is it? Luckily, the
folks at what about It managed to catch

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sight of a Starship ring segment that
looked a bit different from what we're used

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to that Coupled with the fact that
Ship twenty seven, which was recently disassembled,

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had some of its parts sent back
to the production tense instead of being

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scrapped in the rocket garden, it
makes a lot of sense for the SpaceX

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engineers to recycle an unused starship prototype
for this purpose, so we could see

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a whole new starship, or more
likely a modified end piece that will be

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swapped on to a ready to fly
starship. But the real blocker right now

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is likely the FAA investigation, which
still hasn't been completed and will likely have

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a list of demands for changes that
SpaceX will have to complete before even test

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firing a rocket at Boca Chica.
Once again, we'll have to wait and

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see what those conditions might be,
but in the meantime, SpaceX seems determined

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to put on a show. On
July twenty eighth, the Falcon Heavy launched

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into the sky on its seventh ever
mission. The heavy lift rocket carries its

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enormous payload into space on its central
booster, expending the entire thing to get

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into the correct geostationary orbit, while
the rockets twin side boosters made their usual

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picture perfect landing back at Cape canaveral
and what was riding inside the upper fairing

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of the Falcon Heavy this time,
well, the Jupiter three EchoStar twenty four

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communications satellite, coming in at a
whopping nine metric tons of load. There's

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not many rockets that could get the
Jupiter three into orbit, much less geostationary,

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but that's what Falcon Heavy was built
for, and it did the job

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even if it had to use all
the fuel in its central booster, so

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no recovery for that one. The
Jubiter three was made to be a massive

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Internet hub, expanding the hues that
satellite service to a projected eighty percent of

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the people living across the Americas.
It's equipped with three hundred spot beams to

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achieve this sort of coverage and reportedly
has a five hundred gigabits per second.

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The Falcon Heavy upper stage made three
more burns to lift the satellites orbit before

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detaching and leaving the rest of Jupiter's
onboard propulsion enough to get the vehicle into

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geostationary, where it can be the
most useful. EchoStar leadership has said that

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geostationary orbit is the ideal height to
project broadband signals from and has designed their

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Jupiter satellites to operate from those positions
more than thirty five thousand kilometers above the

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Earth's surface. Previous Jupiter EchoStar missions
that were of similar size and had made

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use of both Area and five and
the Ula Atlas five rockets, both of

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which are no longer in service,
leaving just the SpaceX Falcon Heavy. The

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current SpaceX Heavy lift vehicle hasn't had
much cause to be used. Friday's launch

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was only the third this year,
compared to its smaller variant, the Falcon

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nine, which has already been up
fifty times as of July twenty eighth.

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To be fair, there aren't a
whole lot of giant payloads to send into

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space right now. That's going to
be changing, though, as soon as

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commercial companies start launching their own space
stations, and by then we might have

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access to the starship. But it's
likely that Falcon Heavy will still be seeing

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some use for exactly this sort of
mission, lifting large, custom built apparatus

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into geostationary orbit. At least we
hope so. Because washing those boosters land

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side by side is never going to
get old. Sierra Space is getting the

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funding they need to design a more
efficient engine, which company leadership says will

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be the major driving force for their
entire range of operations, from our applications

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and destination sector to space transportation with
our dream Chaser plane. On July twenty

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fifth, the Colorado based aerospace company
confirmed that the US Air Force had just

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handed them two point six million dollar
contract to finish the design and testing of

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their newest upper stage engine, the
VR thirty five KA. The engine is

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designed to work on the orbital stages
of rockets and so has a very good

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thrust efficiency, using liquid hydrogen and
oxygen fuels to produce thirty five thousand pounds

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force of thrust. Sierra Space's chief
technology officer and vice president, Rusty Thomas,

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says that the VR thirty five k
A provides more thrust and higher performance

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in a smaller package than any other
upper stage engine currently on the market,

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and knowing that their prototypes have already
gone through some testing, they likely have

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the numbers to back that up.
Back in August twenty twenty two, the

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company completed a critical design review which
apparently impressed the Air Force brass enough to

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hand them this new twenty two million
dollar contract. Sierra has understandably not released

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much about the engine, other than
the use of a fuel mixed stage combustion

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cycle and something called vortex. A
staged combustion cycle is when a small portion

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of an engine's propellant is fed into
a preburner chamber. This ignites the small

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amount of mix into a fuel rich
gas and sends it into the turbines to

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get the power to the pumps before
being fed into the main combustion chamber and

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burned with the rest of the mix. This is very easy on fuel use.

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Vortex is a bit of a mystery, though we are told that it

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refers to a thrust chamber design,
which is meant to increase the pressure of

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the engine's exhaust in a smaller volume, but that's all we know. Thomas

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reports that this design will be able
to deliver thirty percent more payload mass to

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orbit and will be used with their
partners launch vehicles, which is unsurprising.

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During an investor conference on June twenty
seventh, Sierra's executive spoke about the company's

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goals to build out a series of
modules and vehicles so that they wouldn't have

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to rely on other companies to ferry
their dream chaser spaceplane into orbit, and

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that is probably going to take a
while to become reality, but a twenty

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two million dollar contract certainly gets them
closer to that goal. And then outra