On today's episode, we are getting into the latest space news, including Elon
says Starship will be ready for launch inside the month, while also hinting at
a new version being designed and NASA's next Mars mission is still being planned for
the new Glen. This is the space Race. In the wake of the
second Starship test flight, CEO Elon Musk has been answering a lot of questions
from curious and excited SpaceX fans about the world's largest rocket, and recently Elon
let some interesting information out into the wild. SpaceX is close to leaving version
one of Starship behind. On November twenty fourth, Elon posted an image of
four in production starships in the high bay at starbas Boca Chica ships twenty eight,
twenty nine, thirty and thirty two and mentioned that they are the very
last of the V one line and well, that certainly raises a very specific
question, one that we weren't alone in asking, Hey, Elon, if
these are the last of the V ones, then what's the V two going
to be? Luckily, Elon was still in the mood to talk about the
future, and so he explained a little more. In response to a user
on X asking about the V two Starship, Elon says that the next iteration
of the vehicle's design will hold more propellant, reduce its dry mass, and
improve its reliability. Okay, that's pretty vague, but there is something in
there that Elon is likely hinting at. Specifically, way back in twenty twenty
one, Elon was having a conversation on Twitter about the potential of Starship upgrades.
As time went on, and more specifically, the subject of adding more
engines came up, Musk remark that the ship is begging for three more vacuum
engines to be added, and that the tanks would stretch to make room for
propellant. Now, this could have just been some idle conversation. Most concepts
like this don't survive the first couple of draft meetings with the engineers. But
adding three more vacuum raptor V two s under Starship would increase its payload lift
capacity by roughly fifty percent, taking it from being able to lift one hundred
and fifty tons into orbit to two hundred and twenty tons. So that accounts
for his more recent hints about increased propellant capacity, and the reliability improvements will
likely come from just the application of lessons learned through testing. But what about
the bit about lowering the dry mass of Starship. Surely adding more propellant in
bigger tanks and three more engines would do the opposite. No, well,
we're not going to pretend to know exactly what Musk is thinking here, but
recent developments in metallurgy have been very successful at letting companies like Relativity, space
and NASA work with lighter metals to make things like engine cowlings and fuselage structures.
There's been no word on if SpaceX is intending on dabbling in some of
this interesting new tech to get their weight down, or if they've found other
ways to shave some mass off of their multi story vehicle, but either way,
they definitely need to consider trimming some weight off Starship if they intend to
get some better lifting capacity off of it. Aside from these specifics, though,
the timing definitely lines up with SpaceX moving forwards with their design. These
last four starships should allow them to test deep into next year and give them
time to construct more specific test vehicles for things like orbital refueling demonstrations and lunar
landing attempts. With everything they are about to learn. It would almost be
disappointing if they didn't make a better Starship. Three to four weeks. That
is the latest word from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as to when the company would
be ready to launch another Starship super heavy rocket. In a response to questions
on social media on November nineteenth, Musk indicated that his company was in very
good shape following the second test flight of Starship just the day four on November
eighteenth, saying, quote, Starship Flight three hardware should be ready to fly
in three to four weeks. There are three ships in final production in the
high bay by now. Of course, we are all well aware that Elon's
timeframes are more like guidelines than actual rules, But here he's being very specific,
and with good reason, because there's a huge difference between SpaceX having their
hardware ready for launch and SpaceX having the authority to launch. Elon is one
hundred percent correct. A quick glance from the highway into starbas Bokachka shows that
there are three nearly complete Starship vehicles in the main high bay. There's actually
four in there, but one isn't quite complete yet. More on that later.
We're also aware that the company has Booster ten basically ready to fly,
and just recently transported Booster eleven back from the secondary test range at the McGregor
facility, so that's at least the next two flights very close to being good
to go, with a couple more waiting in. The SpaceX does still have
to complete pressure and cryoproofing testing, as well as some static fires before they
can certify their next pair of launch candidates, but that would likely only take
two weeks or so provided no major hardware issues were found during those tests.
The rest of the time Elon was estimating is likely for the minimal repairs to
the orbital launch mount and part of the tower. If the November eighteenth test
proved anything, it was that the recent upgrades to the SpaceX Stage zero launch
hardware were so effective that the company now has more expectations for the safety of
their equipment than even NASA can boast. Elon shared photos of him standing under
the OLM on the nineteenth, proudly showing that there was practically no damage to
the thing despite having the world's most powerful rocket boosting into it to achieve liftoff.
By comparison, NASA's Artemis one launch left their SLS launchpad devastated. Anyone
would agree that it's a major improvement from star Ship's first test flight, so
that means there won't be a whole lot of time needed to repair and test
that launch hardware, which means we get to talk about everyone's favorite regulatory body,
the FAA, because whether or not SpaceX is ready to go by late
December isn't the issue here. They still need launch approval from the FAA to
plan another test flight. As soon as Booster nine flipped and exploded, the
FAA needed to start a mishap report, which means another investigation period. But
there are silver linings here. First off, with so little damage to the
pad, there won't be much for SpaceX to do in terms of satisfying any
FAA requests for increased safety. The quick disconnect on the tower's chopstick arms might
need replacing, and the OLM might need to replace some panels and get a
new coat of paint, but that's about it, and since no new launch
hardware is going to be installed, the environmental investigations that took so long last
time won't have to be run again. Similarly, the biggest concern from the
first test flight, the flight termination system not activating properly wasn't an issue this
time. Booster nine system activated as the booster began breaking up. According to
SpaceX, and Ship twenty five's FTS was activated manually by the ground crew when
they lost telemetry again. According to their own report, there is a small
issue with Starship's FTS, though it seems that a sizeable chunk of the upper
stage survived the explosion, the starship nose cone and upper flaps continued on long
enough to re enter the atmosphere. Now, that's not a huge issue,
as the current regulation says that the FTS only needs to break up the volatile
fuel containers, and most of the nose cone was not likely to survive the
trip all the way to the ground. Regardless, those regulations were made before
anything like Starship was conceived, and so the FAA might take this as a
q to ask SpaceX to design part of their FTS to be able to destroy
even the hardened nose cone of their gigantic rocket. All that being said,
but though it may not be entirely ridiculous to think that SpaceX wants to take
a run at a Christmas time launch, they have a lot of testing ground
to cover if they want to actually make the deadline for their twenty twenty five
Artemis three mission, and while we here at the Space Race have said that
it doesn't seem possible for them to make that date, we would love to
be proven wrong safely. Of course, As for any upcoming third flight test
for Starship, this new information really does shift the potential schedule up a bit.
Last week we said it looked as though a test in January would be
unlikely, with February being the most probable time for this next launch and may
being a safe bet. But with the new information that so much flight hardware
is essentially ready to go, it seems impossible that SpaceX won't be granted a
license to launch by January at the latest. And who knows, with all
the pressure on the FAA lately, they might finish their investigation before the holiday
break, and then we might see Ift three competing with the ULA's Vulcan for
the most spectacular Christmas launch. A recent Advisory Council meeting at NASA has revealed
that the agency is confident that their upcoming Mars Escapade mission will be ready to
launch by August twenty twenty four at the earliest, and while they are not
entirely confident of that launch date, they are confident that the mission will be
shepherded to the Red Planet on top of Blue Origins prototype heavy lift rocket.
The New Glen Director Bradley Smith of NASA's Launch Services Office, made the statement
to the Human Exploration and Operations Committee on November twentieth, remarking that he was
incredibly excited for the launch, which, considering it's now possibly less than a
year away, is a pretty good sign that NASA is confident it will launch
within the year, but they can't really be sure of that because the contract
holder is Blue Origin, the undisputed king of not disclosing information about their rockets.
Back in February of twenty twenty three, Blue Origin was granted the contract
to take two Rocket Lab made satellites to Mars as part of a Venture Class
or VADR launch contract. These contracts are used to let NASA get certain missions
to the pad for cheap while accepting some additional risk, which is where the
New Glen comes in. Blue Origin has been working on their new workhorse rocket
since around twenty sixteen, when the company unveiled their plans for their own reusable
launch vehicle. Since then, the company has struggled to get it to the
pad, with setbacks related to their BE four engines and of course the pandemic,
but they didn't seem to have any trouble landing contracts. Despite not having
much to show the public, New Glen started landing Blue Origin several military and
government contracts, which leads us to the Escapade mission. The Escape and Plasma
Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers are a pair of small SATs made by Rocket Lab,
the company behind the Electron and the Photon upper stage vehicle that was responsible for
getting NASA's Capstone satellite to the Moon back in summer twenty twenty two. These
two satellites will head to a Martian orbit and study its magnet the sphere for
interactions with solar winds, allowing us to better understand how Mars's thin atmosphere behaves
in solar weather. This mission represents a huge opportunity for both companies, but
it's really down to Blue Origin to get their rocket working on time. It's
hard to say anything about their progress because, as we mentioned before, they
are very tight lipped about their tech. But Whenever they've pushed back initial launch
tests before, they've never made NASA excited, so it's a decent bet that
New Glenn will be flying in twenty twenty four, at least for the first
flight test. As for Escapade, we'll just have to wait and see if
the quiet work of the Blue Origin engineers holds up to testing.