On today's episode, we are diving deep into the aftermath of the second Starship
test flight. What happened, why, and what the future looks like for
the world's largest rocket. This is the space Race. On November eighteenth,
after two hundred and twelve days of repairs, tinkering, construction, investigation,
and testing, SpaceX was ready to fly their Starship once again. It's safe
to say that the second test flight of the world's largest rocket was much more
successful than its first, but the Saturday launch had both its astounding successes and
disappointing setbacks. First, let's quickly go over the flight itself to give context
to those who weren't able to catch it live. At around eight am Eastern
Standard Time on November eighteenth, the team at Starbas Boca Chica, Texas began
the fueling process. Everything went very smoothly here, with the team taking their
planned hold at T minus forty seconds to double check that everything was good to
go before continuing. At T minus five seconds, the deluge system kicked on,
shooting thousands of gallons of water in preparation for engine ignition, which happened
a few seconds later. At T plus four seconds. We had liftoff,
Starship rose easily into the air, no strange drifting, no slow climb,
just a steady acceleration. As it left the pad. At T plus one
minute twelve seconds, Starship was traveling so fast that it had already hit max
q, the point at which the vehicle was under the most amount of dynamic
pressure it would experience for the entire flight. At T plus two minutes forty
most booster engines begin to shut down. This was done slowly, not all
at once. You can see the engines shut down in small groups if you
watch carefully. At almost the same time, Starship's engines activated, using the
flame diverter events at the top of Booster nine to perform a hot staging maneuver
and ease the two vehicles apart without losing momentum. At T plus two minutes
fifve d, the two stages are separate and Booster nine begins its flip for
the boost backburn maneuver that will take it back to the Gulf of Mexico,
but it never gets there. The flip is good, the trajectory looks stable,
but several engines fail to light, and a small explosion is seen at
the rear of the booster. At T plus three minutes and twenty seconds,
the flight termination system on Booster nine is activated and it's blown to pieces.
Ship twenty five, meanwhile, is doing just fine and in fact is perfect
for almost five more minutes of flight. It isn't until puffs of vapor are
spotted at T plus eight minutes or so that something appears to go wrong and
we lose telemetry. It's later confirmed that the FTS was activated for Ship twenty
five around this time, and both vehicles are lost. However, with a
flight time almost double that of the previous test on April twentieth, and every
primary test objective completed smoothly, SpaceX staff and observers on the ground have cause
for celebration, but every success could always be better in spaceflight, and so
while thinking ahead to the future, it's time we looked at the aftermath of
IFT two. Let's start with the biggest question on everyone's minds. How did
the pad hold up? The short answer is very well. The longer answer
is that the launch pad and hardware were the absolute envps of this flight.
The condition of the Starbase pad was notorious in the aftermath of the Starship's first
test flight back in April, without a flame diverter or really any sort of
serious attempts to mitigate the massive overpressure and explosive power from the rocket's first stage.
A gigantic crater was blown into the sand at Bocachica, very nearly obliterating
the OLM and mangling vital parts of the launch tower and tank farm. This
damage was a huge concern in the FAA mishap investigation, as chunks of debris
were flung huge distances from the launch site, forcing SpaceX to really hustle to
install their planned flame diverter system. The initial hull was filled in This new
system was the now famous water cooled steel plate system, a reverse shower head
that pumps thousands of gallons of water upwards and away from the underside of the
rocket. The idea was that the water would act to both cool the steel
plates sitting just under the engines of the first stage booster, as well as
contained some of the noise and pressure created by the initial liftoff thrust, and
it worked like a charm. As soon as that clock hit T minus five
seconds and the deluge turned on, we immediately saw that things were going to
be different with this launch. Just like in the recent static fire tests,
the water absorbed most of the power of the Raptor engine array and turned into
steam, giving us this great view of pulsating clouds of water vapor instead of
gritty dust clouds filled with dangerous chunks of flying concrete. The pad itself had
technicians on it after only three hours of waiting, and less than a day
later, Elon was standing on the thing, giving us a close picture of
the basically pristine site. Elon posted on x just inspected the Starship launch pad
and it is in great condition. No refurbishment needed to the water cooled steel
plate for next launch, an astounding difference from April twentieth. Those engineers deserve
a standing ovation. That does not mean that there was no damage, however,
with clear shots of dangling cables from the chopsticks and a battered quick disconnect,
proving that even a perfect launch can damage your hardware. But this isn't
anything that can't be fixed. Launches always damage some sort of the launch apparatus.
It's a hazard of using explosions to push vehicles into space. Now,
for the flight itself, let's split this into the good things and the bad
things. You're gonna want to stick around for both. First off, let's
look at what went wrong here, because honestly, it's not a whole lot.
Yes, there were two activations of the flight termination systems, but that
in itself is actually a good part of this test. Which might sound weird,
but I'll explain why in a second. During the liftoff phase, it
was noted that there were a couple of pieces of something flying around near the
base of the OLM. It looked a bit like a piece of corrugated metal,
but it could have been anything. Obviously, anything not nailed down well
enough would have been thrown clear. So really this is an indicator that the
site needs to be more thoroughly checked for this sort of material before a launch.
All of the other bad parts of this launch were more or less related
to the maneuvers that both parts of this rocket attempted just after stage separation.
First, the booster attempted its flip for the boost back burn. Honestly,
the flip itself looked great and everything seemed to align well, but something in
the rocket really didn't like that maneuver, and there was a small explosion at
the engines when they tried to start back up. It's likely that the Booster
could have made the attempt to fly back to the Gulf of Mexico with just
a few of its engines, but too many engines failed to light, which
very likely caused an imbalance in the thrust. The Booster began to swiftly fly
off course and the FTS was activated out of caution, which was definitely the
right call. Meanwhile, Starship itself was last seen accelerating in what looked like
a perfect trajectory. Everything was going very smoothly until suddenly it wasn't. Some
puffs of air and the engines cut out suddenly, seconds before the SpaceX team
intended to do so. At first, this looked like a simple loss of
telemetry that the ship was likely still gliding on its way to Hawaii, but
unfortunately, it was confirmed that the FDS had been activated for Starship as well
a time of reporting. It's still a little unclear as to if the FTS
activated automatically or if SpaceX manually flipped the switch, but there are a couple
of likely causes. Some observers have reported that the Starship may have been slightly
off course, which could have endangered a local population, or that the elds
on Chip twenty five hadn't held up, breaking the ship open and forcing the
fts to blow. Ship twenty five had been a very well used test article,
and those welds had been an issue previously, along with the ship losing
heat tiles that had to be replaced right up until days before the launch.
Whatever the reason, Ship twenty five did not break up cleanly, and it
was reported that the nose cone and flaps had survived the initial explosion. They
likely burned up on the way down, but that's still a potential hazard that
the team will have to deal with in latership variants. But that was the
only bad part of this launch, so let's talk about the good stuff first
and most important, everyone of the primary objectives for this flight were hit.
Starship flew from the launchpad in a controlled manner without giving the boring company any
ideas about new directions to take their drilling techniques. Then, not only did
the first stage booster maintain an optimal number of active engines during the ascent,
but all thirty three engines in its array stayed active, gimbled, and shut
down properly, an amazing feat, especially when you consider what happened in flight
test one, and it's likely down to the new electronic thrust vector control system
in Booster nine, as well as the upgrades to the engine bay plumbing to
stop any leaks from becoming fires. The ETV control system was also just generally
responsible for the rocket's ability to very easily stay on its trajectory. For this
flight, every gimbling engine operated perfectly, which was especially visible just after stage
separation, where the three gimbling center engines on Ship twenty five were seen snapping
quickly into place once Booster nine had moved away from the line of fire.
And speaking of separation, the hot staging maneuver that was added to this launch
did exactly what it was intended to do. The smooth separation was the primary
goal of this flight, and it also marked the last flawless thing to work
in the whole exercise, so it was gratifying to see all that testing with
the avionics and the reorientation of some of the launch hardware to accommodate for the
new height of the rocket was worth it. So first and most obviously,
the FAA is going to have to do a mishap investigation. In fact,
they've already announced it. We can hear the booze and we get it,
but this is literally their whole job. In fact, they don't have a
choice here. Once the FDS blue Booster nine to pieces, the FAA was
obligated to complete an investigation. But the good news is that with no reported
damage to property, environment or danger to people, this investigation should be much
quicker than the last one. And on top of that, there won't likely
be any large changes to the mission hardware this time, and so an environmental
review from the Fisheries and Wildlife crew won't be necessary. However, this does
mean that another launch this year is just wildly unlikely to happen. Elon musk
All but firm this with a post on X where he says Starship Flight three
hardware should be ready to fly in three to four weeks. Honestly, it
probably wasn't likely to happen even if Starship had been able to hit both of
its secondary goals. Either, there's just not a whole lot of time to
reconfigure the next pair of vehicles, plan a flight, and launch it before
the holidays, although it would have been cool to see SpaceX try for it.
Speaking of what is likely to even happen for the next test flight.
SpaceX is known for making small, incremental tests so that they can really focus
on problem areas as they come up, so it's a pretty good bet that
the company will attempt to launch again with the exact same mission profile. Of
course, the focus this time will likely be on nailing that boost back flip
and the glide to Hawaii. They already proved they can launch their big rocket,
and it really looked like it had the power to get to orbit,
so they need to prove those technical abilities before trying the next big phase.
With that comes the implication of more hardware testing. Ship twenty five and Starship
in general had been having a problem keeping its heat shield tiles on. One
or two falling off during launch isn't such a big deal, but those can
add up. SpaceX needs to nail down a good adhesive and attachment procedure,
just like NASA did with the old shuttles. The next vehicles are likely to
be Ship twenty eight and Booster ten, with Ship twenty eight showcasing some big
leaps in tech over Ship twenty five. Booster ten is a little more elusive,
but it's likely that the super heavy first stage will see more minor tweaks,
so it can navigate that flip better than Booster nine did. So when
is a more realistic timeframe for the next test launch. Obviously SpaceX is really
chomping at the bit to do another one. They have several test boosters and
starships lined up for flights, but the odds of it happening in the winter
are shaky. It is possible that a launch at the end of January or
sometime in February could happen. The FAA has been under pressure from the government
to act faster, and SpaceX will waste exactly zero time in making the next
vehicle ready for flights. But at the very least, it's safe to say
that a flight in March would be almost a certainty if it hasn't happened before
then. This also implies that Starship cannot complete enough test flights in time for
a twenty twenty five Artmiss three mission. It's just too much work to get
done in between mishap investigations and hardware reconfigurations. For NASA's part, they have
said that they want at least sixty test launches before they'll trust crew inside a
Starship which is more lenient than what SpaceX President and CEO g When Shotwell wants.
When discussing the Dear Moon Commercial Starship mission, which was due to launch
in twenty twenty three originally and take a crew of artists on an orbital trek
around the Moon, Shotwell says that she wants at least one hundred launches before
trusting the vehicle with an untrained crew. Like that fair enough, I suppose
we've all seen the Simpsons. But even if SpaceX can really hustle and comple
all the testing targets NASA needs, that's the orbital test, the refueling test,
the Moon travel and landing tests, and all the hardware tests for the
human landing system variant of the Starship, it just doesn't seem possible that they
could get all of that done in two years. But with so much extra
room in the Artemis schedule, it definitely won't matter much. Artemis three can
be delayed for the little bit of extra time Starship is likely to need.
Just like with the Falcon Nins testing, Starship is only going to get more
and more consistent with each flight. This next year alone should prove to be
some of the most exciting times for this new space race.