SpaceX Starship is ready for the big test! Will it be a full blast?

SpaceX’s Starship Super Heavy Booster 9 is ready for a static fire! The water flame diverter is tested. Is it good enough? NASA leaks new Falcon Heavy fairing! And Cygnus delivers cargo to the ISS for the last time.

#SpaceX #starship #elonmusk #starbase

Editing: John Young, Stefanie Schlang
Photography: Kevin Randolph, aka Chief, John Winkopp & Stefanie Schlang
3D Animation: Voop3D
Script & Research: Eryk Gawron, Oskar Wrobel, Felix Schlang
Host: Felix Schlang
Production: Stefanie & Felix Schlang
Graphics & Media Processing: Jonathan Heuer, Felix Schlang

RGV Aerial Photography - Become a Flight-Supporter!

Credit:

⭐SpaceX
⭐NASA
⭐VirtualSpace_3D on Twitter: @Lolomatico3d
⭐The Ring Watchers on Twitter: @RingWatchers

📄Links for this Episode:

[Whataboutit]

What do you think? Is a Super Heavy Booster strong enough to withstand hot staging and still be reusable, or will it need a shield on top?

[damonried]

Your enthusiasm, sense of humor, and puns keep me smiling throughout these informative videos. Keep up the great work!

[ptolemythespacenerd]

Literally uploaded this minutes after B9’s spin prime! Rapid progress am I right?

[davidelang]

It's also worth noting that Cygnus is not just waiting for firefly to build the first stage, they have purchased 3 falcon 9 flights (so far) so that they can continue to fly every 6 months until firefly's first stage is supposed to be complete.

[stefanieschlang]

Spin prime 1 done, thanks for keeping us informed about what happens next AND what happened before!

[yoda]

The hot stage ring not being welded on is brilliant because if hot stage ring is destroyed in an operational flight the booster won't be needed to be scraped the ring could just be replaced

[ennuied]

It's impressive how quickly they assemble these starships, really impressive.

[ibelieveinscience]

Great presentation, as always, Felix! I am sooo looking forward to the next orbital launch!

[aronapple]

I was in Florida about 15 minutes away from the cape when super heavy was launched. Incredible to see it even from a distance. Made my vacation

[Nathan-vtjz]

Things are amping up! I’m stoked for the second superheavy starship launch!

[HammerOn-bugx]

The tank pressure dome is designed to hold pressure in, not keep it out from the ignition of the upper stage. Some sort of pressure plate will be required above the dome.

In the future, I would suspect that they will redesign the upper dome to handle both tasks.

[fibbs]

Love your work, as always. Nice spot on the water capture system. Still reckon the whole place will be caked in mud for some amusing scenes afterwards. Who knows. Exciting times either way.

[NakedProphet]

Felix @21:45 you pronounce >earth's< in a two syllable way. English has so many quirks, but in this case, just like Smith's, it is all one syllable. Your mastery as a second language is impressive 👏

[Hello_OoOoO]

B9 Has Completed a Spin Prime! Just a couple minutes after this was uploaded.

[ivankirkpatrick]

SpaceX has shown really good capabilities to learn from operations. With data collection assisting in any necessary redesign or design mods. I would expect the Super Heavy to be subject to continuous modifications until it is very highly optimized.

[Astras-Stargate]

I didn't expect the doghouse to make a come back! I expect to see some kind of shielding for the booster. I think the hot fire addition to the system is very exciting. Another good video, Felix!

[danceswithmules]

Makes sense that the HS adaptor simply mates with the existing pins on the booster. I wouldn't be surprised to see this as part of the design going forward, since it would make it easy to replace the adaptor between launches. It's going to take a beating and may not last the life-time of the booster when rapid reuse becomes a thing. Besides, the latches were clearly strong enough to hold when the full stack went into an unstable flight regime. 😁

[pihi]

I love how the "sub-orbital segment" is used for testing the orbital part of Starship and vice versa, the OLM is used to test the sub-orbital part (the booster).

[ooooneeee]

I think the launch failures Firefly has had are very typical of a newly developed rocket. Most rockets had that at the beginning, including, famously, Falcon and many many NASA rockets. As long as they captured a lot of sensor data each time and identified and fixed all of the engineering issues I'm confident they'll get it to launch reliably.

Also as a fan of the Firefly TV show and Serenity movie I love that they called the rockets Miranda. 🤩

[MrBorsetti]

Hot staging ring attached as adapter also makes the old system a possible failover system, at least during seperation testing. Therefore I'm not surprised if welding of these segments is not done on the newer prototypes.
PS: great content Felix, keep up the good work!