On today's episode, we are getting into the latest space news, including SpaceX
works on a starship fuel tanker prototype while waiting for a test launch date.
NASA announces an expansion plan for the Kennedy Space Center that could include a new
star factory, and Sierra Space improves on their inflatable habitat tech. This is
the space race. While SpaceX waits for the bureaucratic red tape to clear for
their next starship test flight, the engineers at Star based Boca Chica are not
being idle in a very typical fashion. The SpaceX team is simply continuing to
work on construction projects around the site, including the manufacturing and testing of new
prototype starships. For example, Ship twenty six was recently spotted getting some work
done at the test stand just to the side of the orbital launch mount.
We haven't really seen Ship twenty six in a while, but this latest view
has some folks confused. As you can see, this prototype doesn't have flaps
or even heat shield tiles, no cargo bay doors or starlink dispensers either.
Earlier sightings of Ship twenty six showed these same things, of course, but
back then it was too early to tell if those features simply hadn't been added
yet, and to be fair, they still could be. But as Ship
twenty six appears to be being prepped to make a static fire test, it's
far more likely that we are seeing the very first test article for one of
the most important systems in the SpaceX ecosystem, the starship orbital fuel depot.
The idea is to design a starship that's just entirely a fuel tank, which
the company will put into low Earth orbit and keep topped up in case another
starship might need more fuel for a longer flight. SpaceX has plans for several
variants of their starship, a crew type, an uncrewed cargo type, a
lander, even versions that can be used to make space stations, and a
fuel tanker variant would support all of these, and while it might be too
early to tell exactly what Ship twenty six will be used for, its lack
of fins or heat shield tiles as it is preparing for static fire would seem
to point to the fact that twenty six is not intended to come back down
to Earth. And more than that, SpaceX testing a potential fuel tanker version
of their starship lines up with their timeline for an orbital refueling demonstration that they
are obligated to perform. It may have gotten lost in the turmoil of testing
and FAA investigations, but one of the biggest reasons for the scramble to get
a second test flight done for Starship was that the company is on a tight
schedule to get the vehicle up and running in time to participate in the Artemis
Moon missions, specifically Artemis three, for which NASA has contracted the company's human
Landing System Starship variant, due to take place in twenty twenty five. The
SpaceX HLS is due to carry a crew of NASA astronauts to the surface of
the lunar South Pole, but before that can happen, NASA wants SpaceX to
prove a few things. Obviously, the first is that their starship can actually
get into orbit, and in that same thought that the Lander variant can you
land. But the other critical test for the Starship ecosystem is the in orbit
refueling using a Starship fuel tanker, and if Artemis three is to remain on
schedule, that means that the testing period for both the Lander and the fuel
depot vehicles have to be completed in twenty twenty four, and so it follows
that we should be seeing prototypes for those two vehicles about now if SpaceX plans
to nail that timeline. Now, looking over Ship twenty six, we can't
see many exterior signs of new tech, but that doesn't mean much. If,
for instance, Ship twenty six isn't meant to test how Starship's fuel handles
being in orbit for long periods of time, then all it would need to
have is a bunch of internal tanks and some sensors. Some folks have also
suggested that this ship could be used to test maneuverability in orbit using its reaction
control thrusters, which is definitely something this variant could test without needing many conspicuous
upgrades, But as it definitely doesn't seem to have any sort of ship to
ship dock and callers, it's not likely to be testing the actual refueling functionality
of a fuel depot. Seeing Ship twenty six getting worked on while we wait
for word of the next Starship launch is encouraging. Like we said, SpaceX
is also on a very tight schedule, and they can't afford to sit around
even when government agencies slow things down with investigations and environmental surveys, so it's
a good thing the SpaceX team has plenty to work on in the meantime.
On September twelfth, NASA revealed an expansion plan for the Kennedy Space Center in
Florida, inviting the public to comment on the new facilities. The document detailed
several improvements for the busy spaceport, not least of which was an over one
hundred acre expansion of the SpaceX Roberts Road facility near Pad thirty nine A,
where the company launches most of their Falcon Nines and is currently building their orbital
launch apparatus for Starship. SpaceX currently uses their roughly fifty acre plot at the
Roberts Road site to maintain their fleet of Falconine rockets that operate from Pad thirty
nine A. This makes a good deal of sense, as transporting even a
tough rocket like the Falcon nine from a further location would just be asking for
delay causing mishaps. In a similar manner, then it makes sense that SpaceX
would want to eventually expand their facilities on the Florida coast to at least accommodate
the maintenance of an active fleet of starships. Transporting the largest rocket ever built
from Texas to Florida, even by barge, seems like a pretty terrible idea,
and obviously NASA agreed. The expansion follows fairly closely to the original plan
laid out in twenty twenty, which was drawn up in phases, as these
sorts of multi year construction projects often are. Even back then, SpaceX was
planning to at least grow its falconine program and knew it would need more room
eventually. Since then, however, the company has gained a new starship flavored
focus, and so the northern expansion of the site will mostly be taken up
by an enormous new hangar, which is very likely to be a new starship
maintenance and production facility. Not unlike the star factory at Boca Chica, the
plan looks fairly easy to complete. Most of the literal groundwork was done in
early twenty twenty one when the first phase of the facility was constructed. Electrical,
water and internet service is already there and would just need to be routed
a little further northwards, and the supplemental environmental assessment NASA presented in their announcement
seems to agree that the expansion isn't a big issue either. The real problem
is the gas line routing, which is always a pain even in less industrial
construction. But a much bigger deal is a proposed expansion of the Saturn Causeway,
an eight meter wide road that links the historic vehicle assembly building to Pad
thirty nine A, and which SpaceX hope to use for transporting their Starship from
the new facility to the pad. The problem is that the starship is wider
than the Saturn rockets were. In fact, the Starship is nine meters in
diameter, which would overhang the road. Their request is to widen the old
causeway to ten point three meters to accommodate Starship and its SPM transport vehicles.
But in the grand scale of things, even these seemingly difficult engineering challenges are
not much to worry about. Digging gas lines and widening roads is fairly straightforward
compared to wrangling an environmental survey. But considering that part is already done,
all SpaceX has to wait for here is for the public comment period to close,
and if by October sixteenth no major issue is brought forward by residents nearby,
NASA will make a final assessment and SpaceX will be able to start planning
their next big construction project. On September twentieth, Hawaii played host to the
fifth test of the inflatable Life module made by Sierra Space, and the test
article passed with flying colors. The Large Integrated Flexible Environment is a mostly fabric
habitation module designed to unfold during an orbital flight by inflating. Sierra designed the
three hundred and thirty cubic meter module to be used on both the upcoming Blue
Origin led Orbital Reef space station project and with their Dream Chaser Crude shuttlecraft for
longer duration missions. Most tests of the design right now are being conducted on
smaller subscale versions of the real thing, and are usually burst tests, which,
as the name would suggest, involve inflating the hab until it pops.
This particular test added a metallic plate meant to simulate a window, which will
be built into the design in the final version, But instead of weakening the
design by breaking up the form of the inflatable module as one might expect,
the metal plate ended up lending some extra strength, allowing the module to survive
a full twenty percent more pressure than previous tests and an overall thirty three percent
margin of safety over the certification standard for this sort of crude space. Obviously,
this thrilled Sierra Spaces engineering staff, who have been looking forward to clearing
the series of gated tests so they can get to a full in orbit demonstration.
The testing for fabric based designs is understandably stringent. There are a lot
of benefits to inflatable modules, but there just haven't been many real world tests
of them to inspire more confidence. The only inflatable hab to ever have been
tested in space was the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module or BEAM, constructed by Bigelow
Aerospace and sent to the ISS back in twenty sixteen and stayed there until twenty
twenty. That test was successful and showed some surprising advantages to inflatable modules.
The first is somewhat obvious, because it's inflatable, the module doesn't have to
be aerodynamic and can simply be packed into a rocket's fuselage until it's in space.
The second is that most of these modules are made from overlapping sheets of
fabrics like kevlar, milar, and, in the case of Sierra's Life Module,
a fabric called vectrin, which goes rigid once inflated. This lends the
module more protection against debris strikes than even the more traditional hard shell aluminum designs,
and finally, some designs even sport better radiation protection, again depending on
their construction. The issue, of course, is that they are a new
technology, and people get a little nervous when you tell them that a bit
of fabric is all that's protecting you from the vacuum of space. So a
series of tests is being conducted one after another to thoroughly check the new Sierra
Space module for any engineering shortfalls. The team will take the next twenty four
months to finish this testing gauntlet, and then another twelve months after that to
finish developing their flight hardware. It's hard not to get swept up in the
Sierra team's excitement. They have some cool new tech and they know it.