Byproducts of Go, you see like a big cloud forming there on the ground.
That's basically where that is right now.
So, Shielddown is really underway.
You can even see the box fan vent really, really going.
So we're going to get some shift area in testing.
To say, last night it looks like we got a spin prime. Today could be a guider test
if it falls in the footsteps of booster 19 or if SpaceX is feeling a little
ambitious they may do a single-ended static fire. Again we will have to wait
and see. There is no indication on what test they're going to do at all.
There are zero indications. All we know is they will prop load it and
And that's it. What happens after that is what happens.
So that's kind of the thing is, in the past we could determine what it was based off the prop load.
It looks like for block 3, they choose the same prop load for every test.
So it makes it really hard to determine what they're going to do.
You just have to wait and see what they're going to do.
So I think that kind of makes it more exciting.
You know?
Well, what's going to happen?
Yeah, dude, I'm in. It's like watching a thriller.
It's great. What a twist, right?
What a twist.
And then, all right, dude, so if you're popping in on Twitch over there, we sent these streams
directly over to Twitch. So if you're over in the Twitch chat, you got questions? Well,
fire away, dudes. It's over on my Twitch stream, right? So we're double casting over
there. I'm just saying this for the people that just saw a live notification suddenly
for the stream on Twitch and like, wait, what's going on? I am hosting some
Tank watching coverage here for NSF. You got questions? Ask us. We're here. I got Ryan and Alex with me
arguably a cornucopia of knowledge. Sorry, I know it's silent, but anyway,
a virtual corner, a plethora of plentiful
intellect or I don't know. I don't know man. I'm tired. Yeah, so
So yeah, if you're wondering what's going on over there, I'm hosting a cast here.
Once again, YouTube chat, stay where you are.
We're just doing the same thing.
I just wanted to make clear everybody in over there.
Tell us what's going on.
Tell you guys what's going on.
It's been an interesting couple of days, but yeah, here I am.
What do we got right?
There's the methane reclaim vent running.
There you go.
Now the problem is, is I did not have the time to look back last night at
the timings. So I don't know the exact timings and we only have one data point on when the
methane reclaim vent starts to prop load and I think it's an hour or 45 minutes. I think
I'd have to go back and look. I'd have to go look at our pole or whatever like that
but we're learning the timings of the new tank farm together here. So I know where
events are and I know where the locations of everything is but as for
timings and everything you know we're just kind of figuring it out together. So...
Yeah baby yeah so once again we're like you said we're still figuring out those
timings but we definitely see some action over there. Now Ryan you were
saying like a box fan we what what is that is it actually like I mean obviously
It's not like the box van that you go and buy from the Dollar Store, right?
What is the box van in itself?
Basically, it's a tall, rectangular box with two incredibly large industrial fans at the bottom.
There's one at Massey's, there's one at the launch site.
There's going to be ones over at the other pads as well.
Basically, they're taking the LN2 exhaust off the subcoolers as well as the locks exhaust
off the like the chill down for the the locks pumps and whatnot.
They're routing it into this box, this rectangle, and when those fans are on, it draws in
a bunch of air and then that air gets pulled in and goes up and through the box fan
or through the box.
And basically you're taking that exhaust and just diluting it with air and dumping
it out into the atmosphere rather than trying to dump it out of the ground because concrete
usually doesn't like like little cold liquids.
So that box fan is in lack of like a percolation pond or something, something to dump the
open loop system for cooling, right?
Yeah, basically.
Okay.
Yeah, probably.
Forever back on pad one when they had that blast wall and all those exhaust ports
off of the locks, sub coolers, and they would just dump it out into the, we had the grass
fit and they just dumped it out into the wetlands.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, basically they're taking all that exhaust, checking it into a box and introducing a bunch
of air to dilute it out.
That's basically what they're doing now.
They're doing that at launch site and here and they should be done at 39 and at 37
as well for those tank farms.
So it's literally, the LN2 even has smaller little fans as well.
So they basically do it just to get rid of the, just to introduce that.
Now the methane side doesn't have a fan.
It has a pressure regulated, it's got an exhaust vent for its subcooler with a couple of different
valves to be able to regulate the pressure of the LN2 coming out of it.
so that they can better, it's easier for them to regulate the temperature of, and speaking
of the methane subcooler vent all the way on the left side there.
You see that lower vent there, that's the methane subcooler vent, next to that one is
the methane reclaimed vent, and the one all the way on the right is the box fan vent.
And then if you see some clouds in the middle, that's their lockspond next to
the ramp.
Basically they are able to control the pressure out of that to be able to control the temperature at which they want to keep
The methane at when they sub cool it so that's why it's not a fan
But it's a set of valves so they can control the pressure a little bit better
So that's your modulation is key. Yes
Fantastic right guys if you once again you we're just chilling here
We're waiting for some action here
You guys won't talk about anything starship related just tag out as NSF
Simultaneously over on twitch just tag at me. I'll see the questions. I keep up with both chats
That's my it's my job as a twitch streamer before everything you got you get make sure you don't get those f's in the chat
You know what I mean? How do you do fellow kids now? I've been doing this from doing this for a long time
So ask us questions here. We're here
I got Alex and Ryan with with me fit very very knowledgeable will
uh...
uh... you know they started posting us in twitsch
all right
cool
uh... so you to chat if you want to talk to me on the you know i'm here
here
okay
only let me just want to do some questions you see see we got uh...
okay patrick space studio this is a question that chris had teed up alex
i'm gonna throw this one over to you
so what are the chances that starship will make it to the moon i'm gonna
guess that's a little bit contextual to a conversation right like is it gonna make
it in time do you think it's gonna make it in time
okay you know how I am with the timeline I ever I ever seen that was the
one that's all I needed to hear yeah in terms of timelines I don't think it's
going to make it a timeline. But you know, the chances I start here will make it to the
moon. Yeah, one, probability of one here. 100%, right? Because one way or another at
some point, it'll do it. I just don't think it'll-
Oh, whoa!
Look at that!
Oh, with the booster on? What?
What is happening?
Water Dalian? She's on the top deck?
It just did the top deck Dalian with the booster on top.
I thought it was like a replay or something and no, it's it's I know I literally glance back at the
Yeah, very that is I literally glance back and I saw the pressure of the daylight
Activate I'm like wait what's going on and then the top just goes
Whoa, so guys that's a body that system is there to prevent sound from
I'm reverbing off the pad when the booster takes off and it also protects the pad from
getting actually obliterated by 33 Raptors.
They just cleaned off the frost, look at that.
Wow dude, generally guys that you don't see, you shouldn't really do that when your rocket
is still attached but I mean, I don't think SpaceX cares.
Rocket wash?
Just wash it, it's just a rinse.
a rinse with really dirty, rusty water.
All the nozzles on that top deck are pointing outwards like they were on the plate for pad
1.
So in theory, none of that water should have touched the booster, or at least not much of
it.
So it should have all just gone outwards.
Now, granted, a lot of it may have spilled down onto the clamps and maybe spilled onto
the engines and everything like that when the thing shuts off and whatnot.
But other than that, actually hitting the booster with a high pressure, it wouldn't
do that because it's all facing away.
Can we show the south view, please?
I know, Jay, I'm sort of backseat producing here, but I think that it actually took
a bit of the frost off.
Yeah, it definitely did
So once again fellas that system that activates post lift-off
I'm not sure if SpaceX was trying to induce a test there or something that
You generally don't want to do that cuz well, I mean the short answer is that rockets don't like being hosed down with water like
That's you know, it might seem like they get really wet at ignition and lift off
But the reality is that that system fires after lift-off like I was so random
Yeah, that was that was definitely
I literally glance over because I was about to tell Jay
To about about about zooming a camera in on this 39 at some point soon
Just in case we could see
Frost forming and then I just see out of the corner of my eye. I see a pressure release
Like near the deluge farm. I'm like, that's weird and then the top that just activated it like what?
So, yeah guys, in case you're just popping in, we've been sitting here watching Super
Heavy do its thing.
They tanked the thing.
They did a spin prime.
Right now they're just letting the propellants boil off.
It seems like they were detanking, but we just saw them fire the top deck sound suppressor
on the booster.
It hosed down the side of the booster.
Well, simultaneously in the top right blocks, we see them spooling up the tank farm, seemingly.
It's a new tank farm, so we're kind of still trying to figure out what exactly what's going
on over there.
But we have simultaneous testing going on here, but they just decided, SpaceX just
decided to hose down the side of that booster.
I mean, like, I don't have any other way to say that.
That's a little bit strange.
I, uh, alright, I've never seen that before.
I just, I'm just gonna say this, you know how much steam we're getting at lift off with
this thing?
Not only the trench, but the top deck.
Like we're not gonna be like, we may get, we're gonna get that exhaust out the side
of the trenches.
And then when this thing goes to lift off, it's just gonna be a cloud of steam covering
the booster until it finally clears it all and then we'll see the exhaust.
It's gonna be so much steam or maybe it vaporizes most of the steam completely
I I think it's not a rated dude
We're gonna see a big cloud coming out of that sucker and then it'll saturate eventually I mean
It I'm thinking something like when we saw the static fires on pad one
But then again, you know with SpaceX maybe they looked at pad one and said now we're getting some ablation on the shower head and
You know even and even ablation on the tower posts, right?
Now obviously that doesn't carry over into pad 2, right? Like pad 2 is a completely different design
But you still got that flame bucket and deflector down there, right? So
Maybe maybe they maybe we do see a giant steam cloud maybe it's gonna end up
I mean, I don't know
I either got something like pad 1 in my mind where it shoots out a big cloud of steam and then
Because steam has like a it's a saturation point. It can only absorb so much heat when it when that happens
It just turns clear, right?
Either that or I'm thinking like the B2 test stand like during the SLS green run where it's just shooting out
Looks like Niagara Falls shooting out the side, right?
It's just it looks so I love the top I love how that they have the
The holes set up and then where the where the most pressure is because you can literally see it it splits the tower
with the most pressure on that side and you have less pressure on the BQD side
but that's because we don't need to protect the BQDs as much anymore and
the thing's gonna go up and the most pressure is where you want where the
booster is gonna turn out so it's it's such a cool the way they have it all
set up and then of course it'll probably fire again and maybe a little
bit lower pressure for the for the landing burns and whatnot. I like they
did when they caught 12, 14, and 15, but no, I completely forgot about ship 39 now, space
X stopped tugging me in different directions.
Dude, hey, it's a good day to tank watch, man, the sun's out, well, the sun's out where
I'm at, it doesn't look like the sun's out there.
It's not out there.
But I mean, I'm sure it's warm.
Yeah, this is man. I didn't think there'd be this much action today, okay?
Fellows we are working so people that are watching tank watchers fellow tank watchers twitch YouTube
We are working on a replay. We'll get your replay that as soon as it's available because yeah, that's uh
As far as I can tell that's a little bit rare
You don't really see them hose down their own rocket like that's not every day that that happens
So, when we get a replay, we got the producers in the background chewing up that replay for
everybody to see.
Because yeah, that was kind of sudden.
We were like, wait, wait what?
Yeah, we got the, we got that under body rinse.
That's right.
Yeah, they paid for it.
They paid for the works, dude.
Where's the hot wax?
You know, like, we paid for the works here.
Let's go.
So, once again, dudes, if you're just popping in wondering what's going on.
We are tank watching out here, this is SpaceX, this is Starbase, so this is down in the southern
tip of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, their SpaceX is doing testing on their booster and
their ship.
So in the main shot, you see a shot of the booster and then you've got the ship in the
picture and picture on the top right.
We did see a spin prime, so we saw tanking and spin prime of the ship, which means
they filled it up with some propellants and then they turned on all the fuel pumps.
I know the full flow stage combustion,
I know it's more complicated than that.
But they turned on all the fuel pumps,
but didn't ignite the motors a little bit earlier.
That's called the spin prime.
And then they seem to be spooling up the pad
or doing some tests with ship 39 over at Massys.
So we'll see where this takes us,
but we did just see a deluge system go off on the main pad,
and that's why we're kind of keeping it
on the main picture right now.
We'll see.
So and I'll just give a primer, a quick primer for anyone who hasn't watched Zach's video
regarding pad two.
Is part two.
He talks a ton about the water.
But yes, absolutely fantastic.
The two trench buckets are one separate system.
Those are the six large tanks on the deluge system.
And then there's the ridge cap, which is like sits right below the engines.
It binds right between the two buckets.
That has its own three smaller tanks as well as its own pressurization system.
The six large tanks for the buckets also have their own pressurization system.
And then the top deck has its own three tanks with its own pressurization system.
So when they go and activate separate parts of this day ludes, they aren't taking
from the same tanks.
They are their own separate supplies and pressurization and little, they're not really baby raptors
but they're gas standardators, they basically burn gaseous, oxygen and methane to create
a heater and then they put in LN2 which then vaporizes, goes into basically a pipe and
then goes into the tanks, pressurizing the tanks and that's basically what that
It's just basically a gas standard. It generates a bunch of nitrogen gas and high pressure because when you take a liquid and instantly turn it into an incredibly hot gas, your pressure is going to go way up.
You're going to skyrocket pressure because when the gas expands like that crazy, you can get a lot of pressure out of it, especially in a confined environment.
boiler but for nitrogen how about that yeah that's you're talking about the
sound suppressors right they they it's they're using nitrogen as a pressure
to push water around right mm-hmm yes yeah baby they they literally ignite
that ignite the burner in there dump L and two in vaporize it that that it
that vaporized nitrogen then gets pushed into the tops of the the water
daily tanks which then gets pushed through the lines and then out through
either the bucket the ridge of the deck basically at incredibly high
pressures a high enough pressures to counteract the pressure of a raptor
engine hey okay Alex Ryan take a look right at the so right underneath the
main pad deck in this shot. Is there something hanging there?
There is. What is that about Alex? Can you tell me what that is?
I have no idea. It looks like some kind of wired...
The real question is, was that hanging there before?
I think it was. I don't remember exactly, but I think it was.
One of their testing things may have come loose a little bit.
That's easy to fix, they just get in there, they'll literally lower a little GOG lift
into the trench and then they can fix it overnight.
I know you saw a lot of water go off, but they have two sumps inside the trench which
they can literally pump the water out and whatnot, so yeah, they try to reuse some
of it if they can.
Cool.
It's potable water, you can drink it, right?
Right, you can literally drink it.
Did you see how dirty that water looked when it came out of either the trench or the top
deck?
You see how rusty and dirty that looked?
How long had it been that it had been activated like a week?
We're going to have?
It hasn't been that long since they last activated it.
Those tanks are kind of dirty, I guess.
So actually, guys, I think, okay, here's the replay.
this so see that see it blows down on the left over there like that's the that's the
shit that's just that's the system pressurizing right like look at that yeah look at the range
on that it's going all the way over the oh it's going over the gateway to bar sign and
on the highway wow look at the range on that jet you know a little wash that oh star hopper
Yeah, right. I hope you got a little bit of a shower there.
Jay's saying we have eight replays of this, so we'll see multiple angles.
Oh, feed us, please.
All right. What have we got here?
Take a look at the frosting, how it changes after the test.
Right.
Dude, that is...that's a lot of water, man.
Oh, my goodness.
see how high those water jets are like I just like it's hard to get a sense of
scale at how tall all this stuff is like a third of the way up the booster and the
booster is huge yeah that's like this 70 what 72 meter tall booster almost yeah
yeah that's about 220 feet tall 22-story building guys that thing is
This is tall as an entire Falcon 9 stack and about two times as thick.
It's super heavy as no joke.
That thing, I mean, with those raptor threes in there, Alex, we're putting out well beyond
15 million pounds of thrust.
That's almost, it's like two and a half times the Saturn V, something like that.
Yeah, I think, let me do the quick math here to translate into pounds.
we're pushing 70 mega newtons right yeah a little bit more than that it should
be for for version three because raptor three is a little bit more powerful than
it's not 280 as some people are saying by the way that's the end goal that's
what they want for a raptor three and then after that it's like raptor four
with 300 tons or something like that but yeah it should be about 18 million
pounds of thrust with 33 engines. That's a lot of thrust. Okay so we should have audio
coming on the next one here.
Alright.
That's all the way from highway 2. That's loud.
That's... yeah. Guys, this camera is not close to the pad. I've been...
...to the roof.
Whoa, the white is CP 11 which is close!
Yeah. Geez. Hey Alex, you're right, it washed the frost off the side of the booster, you see that?
Yeah, I did.
I wonder if it's more about direct contact or that the air immediately next to the booster was sort of pushed out by the water?
Does that must have an impact, right? I don't know.
Yeah. So fellas, I got a question over in coming from from Kite and Mazzala over in
Twitch chat. Like I can't put this one up on the screen, but I was wondering, and Alex,
this one's going to you because you're the space architecture nerd like I am. What
do you think space is going to do with a starship if they get it up there for Artemis 3 to
dock with? What do you think they do with that starship, right? Because there's so
so much more objectives that they have to do, I mean...
Like after the mission ends?
Yeah, like say, we send an Orion up there, they docked a starship, everything goes honky-dory,
now SpaceX has a starship, presumably in low or high Earth orbit.
We don't know the concept of operations for Artemis III just yet, guys, but what is that?
The brakes.
Hold up.
Booster vending.
Yeah.
Impress vent.
Yep.
Look at the group fins, right above them.
Yep, yep.
That's the...
Let's depress Vented Booster.
We're pretty close to prop load for Ship 39.
See, we're looking at the replays. We're answering questions and saying something.
That's how it goes.
Everything everywhere, all at once.
So for people that don't know that's that is a vent line from SpaceX's methane tank when they vent down the tanks like that
That usually means they're done with they're done for the day
Especially considering how long this deep breath is
a
Lot of rockets guys use tank pressure for structural rigidity starship is no exception
Alex how thick is the tank wall on the starships nowadays like
about four millimeters yeah okay that's not to think it's not too thin oh yeah
as far as we know it's sort of around that we're talking some parts of the
ship for example might be slightly thinner by slightly like three point
something right I think I can't remember the payload is still 3.4 the
The problem is that we used to see the stainless steel wheels arrive with labels on them, but we haven't seen them in a while so for all we know, they may be slightly thinner, but I think they're still sitting at 4 millimeters.
is you know right away so like with with the steel that it's got right and the
stringers and all reinforcements both the ship and booster are fine right but as
you mentioned EJ if you pressurize the tanks then you can better take the loads
right like like a coke can sort of thing right yeah it's not open when it's
fully pressurized it's quite hard to crush it when you open it and empty it
out, it's quite easy to project, right? Same deal here. It's a lot easier to, you know,
whatever loads you put on the booster or the ship to affect the vehicle structurally when
it's unpressurized. But if you pressurize it, then it can take those loads a little bit
better. And so, yeah, that's why they also fly like that with tanks pressurized.
I mean, yeah, they're going to need all the help they can get when all those engines
ignite. You need all the rigidity that you possibly can. But once again, guys,
you got to think about starships already made out of stainless steel you're dealing with a
interesting mass fraction to say the least i mean not many people make rockets out of stainless
steel except for like centaurs right so you know you pressure you use everything to your advantage
there to try to gain some structural rigidity because you can't you can't use as much stainless
steel as you could with like an aluminum rocket aluminum rockets have it as a much thicker
tank wall with like milled stringers for instance like the aluminum is way thicker
with the steel you don't have that luxury so yeah if you're wondering why
why the thing's been cheating here for like couple minutes now it's because
they really pressurized those dang things up to get some structure into
that thing because you got to remember what's on top of it right yeah and then
what's pushing up from the bottom right it's no joke and then you meant
because you mentioned Centaur and then in the case of Centaur it's actually
not stable without pressure station right like that's the the complete sort of
extreme of this where it's like even without pressure it will crumple right
its walls are like eight times bigger it's like half a millimeter we should be
into prop loader very nearly in a prop load on ship right as right as
The wind direction isn't really helping, it's blowing all the methane subcooler exhaust across
the ship in front of it.
They were upgrading the snot out of Massey's after the ship 36 decided to ship 36 int.
What is that structure next to the ship if you haven't watched Tank Watching in a little
since Ship 36 popped. What is that thing on the side?
That is a new truss structure.
They built it. It was kind of one of a really, really late edition after
all the changes, the other changes to Massey's.
When Ship 39 first went out for cryo, they used it
to test the forward and f-flaps as well as
they had chopstick simulators attached to it to squeeze the
ship, which in fact you could even see the squeezing, I think we have some clips of it
pulled at some point here. I have to go find them again, but you could actually see the
cable between the two, the chopstick sims like tension as they squeeze the ship around
the payload bay. And basically to test how the payload bay would stand against two chopsticks
closing in on them during the catch. And then I guess they wanted to test possibly a new
drive system or a new motor maybe on the flaps. None of that system is currently hooked up
to 39 as far as I know. It should just be the QD as well as the new purge system that
goes under the ship aft itself as part of the upgraded ship static fire stand after
got fried from ship 36. And yeah, there's a lot of little cool upgrades all over the
place at Massys. Definitely things they probably wanted to do in the beginning, and they just
didn't, and now this kind of gave them the excuse to do it all. A lot of things are
protected in bunkers now, protected behind blast walls, not out in the open. For those
who remember some of the flyover pictures from after ship 36, you can see how mangled
everything is if another ship 36 event were to happen there would be they would lose a lot of the
lines that come from the the fluids bunker to the ship stand but other than that pretty much
everything else would be safe. They would just have to replace those lines which that's not
really that bad to do. It's a lot easier than trying to redo the entire tank farm.
I mean that speaks to, with the exception I'd say of block 3 and that pad, so pad 2, right?
It speaks to the iteration here.
I mean that kind of shows you where SpaceX's goals were in the early parts of the Starship
program.
Like obviously it was, you know, see if you could do the flippin' burn at the beginning,
right?
And then, you know, you get into the flight test, flight test 1 to flight test 11.
goal really wasn't like figure out the pad design. The goal was just get the thing to go, right? Like
now you even see iteration on the pad. You see iterations on the test side. It just kind of speaks
to how how SpaceX does their iteration. It's not just for the ship. Roadblocks still up there from
what we can see. No, wait. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Guys, guys breaking news. The sheriff has
shifted the car into reverse, and the country means a road open as one as one
there we go here ends another one is still going so speaking of road closure
of road open they just changed the road closure page and now it shows primary
for tomorrow so here we go.
And now we have the march of the cyber trucks to the pad.
No it's April EJ.
It's not March.
March was two weeks ago.
I was getting my cyber truck migratory patterns wrong.
That's my fault.
Here we have the majestic cyber truck going down to the pad.
You had long march.
It's not majestic.
We prepared for long April.
April is going to be a long April and we still have plenty of action left.
We still have more testing from these two vehicles.
We have a Falcon Heavy.
There's another Atlas teed up for another Kuiper mission.
ULA put LVOS last night.
That launch vehicle on stand means they started stacking.
That should be around the same time as Falcon Heavy
The unfortunate thing is that this is almost 1000% not going
Head ready, head ready April
Ready, ready?
Yum!
You knew, you knew
Yup, yup, I knew it was coming
Yum, yum!
We need more sleep
Oh boy, I don't know what I'm going to get sleep right now
but it will be at some point in my life over the next couple of days
a couple of days and there are no health problems from that right now, they are actually
not.
No, absolutely not.
No, it's fine.
Sorry, you should need to do it one more time.
I'm waiting to try to see Frost right now.
Dude, look at that, that thing is really going into overdrive.
Yeah, the leftmost is your methane co-cooler vent.
Yeah.
What?
Yeah, the popes, yeah, keep keep going. Sorry. Nice.
Yeah, the left most is your is your methane subcooler vent. The big cloud you see in the
middle between the two vents is it's kind of like your locks chill down pit and a lot
of other jazz. And then the one the vent on the right is that of course that locks
box fan vent for the lock sub coolers.
With them going this strong
and having this much pressure behind them,
they should be into prop load
or at least really, really chilling things down.
I'm waiting to try to see any frost right now.
I'm gonna have to go back
and record all these timings here whenever I,
you know, I don't feel like death
or whatever when here we are.
The methane sub cooler cloud is not helping.
You're not helping.
you're blocking my view of seeing frost
net help gang wind
blowing up a reaction
yelling at wind
ryan weber yells at cloud
alright so
uh... once again we're doing some we're doing some sunday tank watching here
guys if you just pop it in is wondering what's going on we we did see space
x do a spin prime they tank
booster nineteen out at pad two at starbase
they did do a spin prime and then for some reason decided they wanted to get
the comet wash on their rocket and sprayed it down with the pad deluge system
and then detank the vehicle but now just as that's wrapping up over there the
roadblocks open it opening up to uh...
to the pads we got some action out here at masses we got ship thirty nine
out there on the test stand now
right now i can
i've been on an arty miss to kick i'm not going to lie to you just that
thing has all of its engines doesn't it
Should have all six engines, yep.
Oh, baby.
Three, three centers, three R-backs.
Now, and those are Raptor three back-ins, right?
Uh-huh.
Oh, baby.
Yeah.
Oh, yes.
That's sweet.
So guys, the reason why we're covering this
is because what we're looking at here
is SpaceX's Block 3 architecture for Starship.
SpaceX basically redesigned everything.
I don't think there is a common component here
with the previous versions of Starship.
Any ideas?
Ship is pretty close.
There's definitely changes here and there.
There's heat shield changes.
There's raceway changes, auto gen changes.
There's certainly changes, but there's a lot of,
there's more, there's a lot of similarities
still between block three and block two,
but they did make a lot of improvements
across the board.
The biggest change is Booster.
Booster's like a collegiate design, basically.
The only thing that's same with it
is basically it's a 9-meter diameter and it's stainless
steel.
And it's got a form of raptor engines.
That's basically where your similarities at.
That's how changed it is.
But ship, there's still a lot of similarities there.
So I wait, I think I think locks frost, I need, I need the, I'll be honest, I, I don't
know how you can see that.
I think I'm waiting for clouds to move out of the way.
Evan help.
So Kevin meet your clouds out in the way.
So for the for the uninitiated guys, we're looking for frost on the booster.
The reason why we're looking for frost on the booster.
Yeah, dude, too much not enough to look at for costs on the ship.
All right.
The reason why we want to.
Yeah, yeah, lock shops.
Yep, definitely lock shops.
Absolutely.
Yeah, there it is.
That means they've started moving propellants into the ship.
Now, whether that's for a static fire or for a spin prime,
spin prime is basically a fuel pump test for the ship.
We don't know.
We got to kind of wait and see.
But we're here.
We got the popcorn out, you know, hopefully, hopefully,
you see some action here. The ship boosts the same thing. Yeah, it's close. No, it's
not. I really need to not have my brain be like Elmer's glue right now. You know that
noise like if you squeeze Elmer's glue and it's like, that's me right now.
Oh man, that sound.
Yeah, that is me. That is my brain right now. So forgive me guys if I can't do the
The unit conversion is good.
I'm usually good at that.
How am I functioning?
I'm just going to ask the genuine question.
How am I functioning more than you two?
Have both of you slept at all, like slept around five or more hours within the last
like 24 hours?
Ryan, yeah, I got some sleep last night.
I let yesterday, I stayed awake for most of the day,
and then, or at least I was awake at like 2 or 3 p.m.
And then I went to work, came home.
I think I have like an hour and a half of sleep under me,
and here I am.
I feel like I'm functioning more than either of you.
How's that possible?
Alex and I covered the entire Artemis II mission.
I also covered a lot of it too and I worked.
Brother, brother, I don't know.
Dude, I did 10 60 hour streams back to back.
10 days straight.
My plane is not good.
Alex was right there with me.
He was doing it on the, yeah, and I was in a suit.
That's true.
Jay in the back, in a suit.
I wasn't in a suit for all of it.
No.
There is a chance that I completely just, just,
just kind of collapse after all this,
but we'll see what happens tomorrow.
A couple of people in chat are saying I'm getting old.
And you know what?
You might be right, but you don't need to say it, man.
Geez, you don't need to remind me.
No, yeah, guys, I'm coming off a huge thing where, yeah,
I covered the entire Artemis II mission.
I did the whole thing.
I only slept when the crew slept.
And even then, I kept the stream live
because it moon mission, baby.
And then, you know what?
When this thing takes its trip out to the moon,
if SpaceX's gonna give us some 24-7 coverage,
guess what?
We're doing that too.
Just saying.
It better.
Yep.
Like.
Mm-hmm.
So, I want HD cameras off Starship
all the way to the moon.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
So, okay.
Once again, all right.
Serious note here.
We're looking at Massie's test site.
this is down at starbase this is at the very southern tip of texas and what
we're looking at here is ship thirty nine that space x's newest starship
it is out on the test and we're hoping to see some action here now we did get
frost lines on the ship which means they that they have started loading
propellants
you know a lot of folks saw the sys ls get tanked s ls didn't have any ice
on the sides because they have that spray on foam insulation starship
doesn't necessarily have that because well different material design and
made out of stainless steel. So what they do have is ice build up on the side of the booster.
It's a great indicator to show that they're moving propellants into that thing. Now,
Ryan, have we seen that frost line go up? It looks like it's going up.
It is. It's like a couple of rings. It looks like. I think it's at least the bottom section
It looks like it's almost up to that patch of tiles there that they have.
So they're slowly loading it.
I guess they're taking their time to load ship right now.
I still want to know how quick ship is going to load on the pad because they have four
large LOX pumps and they have the same number of methane pumps for ship at the launch
site that they do for booster, and they only have one less LOX pump.
So I have this feeling ship's going to get loaded in like 20 minutes or something like
that for a full stack.
But you know.
Yeah.
So, Ryan, you're saying that Massies, so we were talking about that before.
Massies has the same type of pump, but what's the difference?
Just sorry, this is more for me than for Chad.
I just want to, what is the difference here?
Oh, the methane side is the same type of pump that's over at the launch site.
The lock side pumps are not, they're the same type of pumps that it looks like they're
going to be using over at LC39A, because based off of the setup that they're doing, because
that crane you see there on the right, it's got a drilling rig on it, it's been drilling
pilings.
There used to be three really old decrepit locks tanks, they took those out, they're
drilling new piles in.
There are two new 1,000 cubic foot horizontal tanks as well as two large vertical tanks.
It looks like all those are going to go there and they're going to increase the capacity.
Either they're going locks only on those or those are going to be LN2 and they're redoing
the entire tank farm at Lassie's for the first time since they built the dang thing
back in the S-25 days and earlier is where some of those tank farm came from.
Yeah, it's old.
It's out of date.
The layout's out of date.
But either way, it's not the exact same, but it's close.
So they can't load it as fast here as, say,
they could at the lock site, because they don't have
as many pumps.
But it still looks like it's reloading relatively fast.
I'm trying to see when we first saw the locks frost.
Someone pointed it out.
I think that looks like at least 6... actually... wait really?
Is that that?
I don't feel like it's loading that fast.
Apparently all that has been loaded in like 7 minutes.
Why does it feel that fast?
Yeah!
It doesn't feel that fast though.
Are we just too used to booster now?
I mean, well, it's Ryan.
It's like what you were saying a little bit earlier.
We don't, guys, we don't have any like privy SpaceX information.
If anything, we're like, hey guys, they're like, no, go away.
Like, no, we're not telling you.
You're like, we have to sit there and watch just like you,
just like you guys do.
And that'll make us better educators when they, you know,
go to keep doing this in the fur in the future,
further into the future.
That's what I was trying to say.
Alex, you've got the spreadsheets out, right?
For what?
For timings here?
Oh, no.
I've not been doing that for a while.
No one does.
Yeah, for this.
No one.
The only time point we have for this new setup was last night.
And I haven't had a chance to dissect it with being at work and now being on the
stream and maybe trying to get a little bit of sleep. I just have a chance to look back
at the timings, but I haven't been recording this. I'm going to have to go back and do
all that. I'll probably try to do that tonight at work to keep myself awake. But basically,
this is, we're finding out with everyone what the timings are here because this is
the new tank farm. Literally, this is only the second time that this methane tank
farm is loading propellant aboard a vehicle. The first time was last night.
So it's going to take us a second to get these timings down. But yeah, there's
definitely frost on that thing guys. If you, you know, squint your eyes you get
this what I call safety squints. You can see that there is definitely a white
line moving up that ship, which is great. I'm waiting for frost on the
methane tank but it might be a little minute because they don't put a lot
methane on board these. They'll fill the transfer tubes and these are just and as a
reminder there's a singular transfer tube down the middle which is the
same size it has been on ship for a long time. And that transfer tube is for the
three center engines and then there's a separate transfer tube for all three
RVACs. So the LOX tank looks like the S1C tank for those for those who've
looked at the cross section of the Saturn V. It had separate transfer tubes for all
the F1 engines. That's kind of how Starship is set up here. But basically,
they can fill those up, and then they'll basically just kind of fill up the, there's
a little beehive, and then there's the common dome, and maybe a little bit
more of the common dome. So they don't really fill much methane up on these.
At least they didn't do it last night, from what looked like spin prime.
I don't really expect them to do a higher load for a static fire, because I'm not really
expecting to, you know, I don't expect a 60, I was about to say a 60 engine, 60 second static
fire.
There, my brain is not working either, either EJ.
Sorry, sorry.
Mostly me, I've infected you now, that's my fault.
No, my tiredness has catching up with me, but I am.
Coffee.
staying here and watching ship because I want to watch ship get tested and I think that's
a methane frost line.
Yep, looks like him.
Oh yeah, so.
Oh yeah, like halfway up the vehicle.
Yep, squint your eyes real close guys.
Yeah, Alex said about halfway between those two tile mart, like if you look at the two
splotches of black on the left side of the ship, about, well, let's say like two-thirds
of the way between those lines you could see a frost line forming.
So as Ryan was saying, they don't, even if they're doing like a spin prime test, which
is basically, that's like testing the fuel pumps for the engines, or if they static fire,
they don't fill up a lot of methane in there.
They fill up a lot of liquid oxygen to work as ballast because we don't want to, if
they do spin prime or static fire, we don't want our static fire to turn into a dynamic
fire.
We tried that once. It didn't work very well. So they filled the locks tank up with ballast,
the locks that's liquid oxygen and methane is liquid methane. Those are the propellants
that Starship uses here. But yeah, definitely have a frost line. Now, Alex, we didn't
get to finish this question before. What do you think they're going to do with Starship
after Artemis III?
Yeah. I have no idea. I'm going to be honest. Like you could think, well, maybe they can
refill it and be the one that does the uncrewed demo. But I just wish that biartemis 3 will
already have the uncrewed demo, or at least it's already ongoing in a parallel situation.
Like if by middle of 2027, and effectively less than 10 months before the landing itself,
there's no anchor demo that that will not be great timing right like the goal is
to have Artemis 4 within 10 months after Artemis 3 and so it's a lot to go
through especially if they need a redesign right or like tweaking things
here and there I don't know I think I would like to believe that it's just
going to be different, right? So what to do with the Artemis 3 HLS? I don't know, maybe
do more testing in orbit. Hey, maybe you do the uncrew demo before Artemis 3, then you
launch the Artemis 3 HLS, right? And then after the mission ends, you test more things that
might have been a little bit wonky on the uncrew demo. Why not? That could be probably
an idea there, but I have no idea that that's definitely something that that
SpaceX will need to figure out or just the orbit and burn out in in the
Pacific Ocean or something like that but who knows.
Yeah I mean there's certainly a lot of things that they could do but I'm kind
of waiting for NASA to have more of their concept of operations right
Because guys, so Jared Isaacman was talking about the other day talked about in a press conference during Artemis 2
They don't know if the Artemis 3 is going to be a high earth orbit or a low earth orbit test
Hmm. I mean certainly Alex if it's a high earth orbit test that's gonna change
What I think that would very much change with what SpaceX does with start with with that HLS demo even blue like
It's a that really changes things right because that means that it's a similar orbit to the the first orbit that
Artemis 2 got went into on flight day one and flight day two right
Doing a prop demo in an orbit like that makes going to the moon not that big of a deal now
Whether you can get out there and slow down in time is another story
But yeah definitely changes things up a little bit. I mean, I think we really need to figure out what?
NASA is doing we need to figure out like once again it's called concept of
operations or con ops yeah we got to figure out the con ops for that mission
before we can kind of figure out what the custom with the commercial customers
or the commercial providers not customers are gonna do with the landers right
like yeah I wouldn't be surprised if NASA is sort of hoping to see what both
blue and SpaceX do in the next month right because blue has the upcoming
third launch of New Glenn and you've got also flight 12 with Starship and yes
they are not neither of those launches are in support of HLS or or anything like
that but their success plays into what's going to happen next right because many
launches from now on New Glenn is going to do the launch of Blue Moon Mark 1 but
that first sort of uncrewed it's an uncrewed lender right and it's also
like a smaller version of the one that they are actually using for for the
first landing, which is supposed to be sort of like a mix in between Mark 1 and Mark 2.
So you've got that, and then you've got Flight 12, right?
Flight 12, first launch of version 3.
You hear a mid, for example, yesterday, talking about how many things are in progress for
Artemis 3.
I mentioned that, obviously, the beauty in version 3 of Starship is critical for the
agency to ensure that in the future, this version is what HLS will be modeled on.
like, HLS is just going to be another variant of the version 3 ship.
And so if it works, then that can give you a lot of confidence on the future of the timeline
for HLS.
And I think that's probably what's going to dictate the sum of that concept of operations.
Like I feel if Starship goes well, maybe they will try the higher orbit variant, right?
Where they go into that higher orbit.
And then they, you know, that drives the use of, of the ACPS and the ESL is like that decision
drives a lot of things in there because you probably need a few refuelings of the HLS,
but not as many as, you know, all the ones that they need to go down to the surface of
the moon and all that.
There may be one or two and that's it, right?
Like all of those sorts of things are pending a good flight of both Starship and
new Glenn so that they can advance to a different sort of planning with that mission.
And I'm going to be surprised if before the start of summer, we hear some more concrete
information about that.
Is that the liquid oxygen tank almost loaded?
Yeah.
It's almost full.
Like they say, this is fast ship load.
loaded this so far in like 17 minutes. So yes, I actually think booster will be
loaded in 30 minutes and ship will be loaded in 20 minutes when it comes to a
full stack. I can't wait to see the timeline for flight 12 or what a wet
dress rehearsal looks like. It's gonna be hilarious.
Anyway, well if it's static fire we'll see it that's for sure. Oh yeah,
If it's a screen prime, it's going to be a lot difficult.
It's going to be very, very hard to see him.
A possible T0 could be in like 10 to 12 minutes,
give or take, somewhere along those lines.
So basically, they spend the next five, some odd minutes
topping off.
They check out systems.
We'll probably see the flaps go flappy.
Remember that?
That indicator, Alex?
They did it yesterday, I know that.
Are the flaps hooked up to the structure?
I forgot.
As far as I know, no.
So nothing is hooked up to the hogging structure?
Sorry, yeah.
It's not hooked up to that, just the QD on the QD gantry.
So they're only using that for cryo then, right?
Because that was only used as far as I know.
They only use it for S39.
I assume since it's staying around
and all the flat testing hardware has stayed,
I would not be surprised if they tested S ship 40,
which should be the next thing to come.
As soon as 39 leaves, 40 is not likely far behind it,
to just say that, Forty will go into, will go onto the stand as well, and they may, they
may do some flap testing with Forty as well, I don't know.
But I know that they, I think they're turning that structure into a more permanent like
access structure because they have a work platform that's like right around the payload
bay area.
So much better than the lifts that they used to use.
Yeah.
Yeah, a little bit, right?
I'm going to plow through some support here, boys.
that we got tell star eighty six
coming soon to steam starship washing simulator with paid do with pat deluge
dlc all right let's go home
i mean
tell sir i play that i'm not that i'd play it
i'd do it
i'd give a shot
not a lot of you
so don't spicer when you got here this is prime take watching thank you and i
sat the new era begins five dollars to check the add to it
this is good stuff
Thanks, thanks, man, we appreciate it.
All right, we got S-Bellis 67.
What happens to HLS after it delivers astronauts
back to lunar orbit?
See, that's another, I'm thinking you're asking like,
Artemis, like what we're talking about,
Artemis-4 here now.
Ryan, you want this one?
What do you think?
You think SpaceX is gonna try to use it?
Hey, flop testing.
Oh, flop testing.
That could be the T minus 10 minute mark,
So, 440 or so, there you go.
All right.
All right, hold up.
So you've got 10 minutes.
Two minutes or that.
You've got 10 minutes.
My whole thing is like, OK, it goes back to the lower ground.
How much prop does it have left in it?
Is if it's got any little bit of prop in it, just burn it
and send it out into the solar system from the moon.
I hate it.
I don't hate it.
Yeah?
My proposal is refueling and use it again.
Yeah, I'm kind of with Alex.
I mean, but what happens is either way, right?
Yeah.
The advantage is that, yes, it takes a lot of other flights, yes.
Like you need to refuel first the ship in low Earth orbit,
and then send it to lunar orbit and everything.
But you don't need as much propellant,
because now you're already in low Earth, in low lunar orbit
or something like that, right?
Like you don't need a fully fueled ship in that case.
So, yeah, might as well have like a second shape or something like that, that sort of
transits in between the moon and Earth.
That actually has a heat shield, for example.
And then you can do air capture and all that, and you don't have to do all the weird
things like, you know, having to have a lot of propellant margins and things like that.
You can just do air captures and that sort of thing.
Yeah.
That's a good question.
Then we got back country bound. Heck yeah, man. Thank you for gifting the red team membership.
We appreciate you. All right. So we said when they did the flap testing, that was T minus
10 minutes, right, Ryan? Yeah, that should be around a T minus 10
minute mark based off of block two era. We're doing that. Okay, we'll see.
For those of you who remember seeing S37 and S38 out on the launch mount where they would
do the flap testing at static fire, because what, I still remember it, we were doing that
flap testing and then, what was it, I think it was, I'm trying to think here, we were
They were doing the flap testing on S36 and then all of a sudden the ship blew up.
It was like right after the flap testing, I think it was.
I was just trying to correlate my thoughts right there.
That was bad.
But anyways, yeah.
Don't worry, I knew what you meant.
Okay, all right should be coming up near what a five minute mark now I think
Seven yeah a little bit over or five minutes. It's it's funny because in the ticker below
We've got when the potential spin prime for the booster happen. It's been just two hours
Yeah
Ain't no rest for the wicked dude. They got a complicated architecture
To get NASA that lander
So they got to go and I think I mean when actions speak louder than words message received from SpaceX. I think
Well, what was it I think Caesar told me
That the because I asked if if Masty's ever closed I asked him to tell me
Caesar told me that he's closed at 2 27 p.m. So it's just before the sped prime
So that tracks if they had literally just closed it that tracks from closer to near
Near the test is about is usually about two hours
It takes them about an hour to release to do the initial spin up of the system and then the full chill down to the
To the actual
Stand takes about another hour
Or so or at least it takes about another half hour, and then I guess another half hour to load it and here we are
like
Here we are
Crazy so
You know Ryan you were talking about chill downs Alex you got you got like maybe five to six minutes here
What why are we chilling down lines here? What does that mean?
Well, you know
It's it's basic
basics and materials engineering and all that when you've got something
That is sort of an ambient temperature, right and then you cool it down so quickly to like cryogenic temperatures
everything
Normally when you cool down things they tend to contract, right?
and
What happens is that if you do that too?
To abruptly I don't know what what would be like to to sudden right that happens to sudden then the material can break
Depending on on the material eventually if it's too too sudden every material breaks, right?
Because you know there's no material I can really especially if it's too too too sudden
that can really take that out. So what you do is just basically try and get it to the point where it's
like you do instead of like a shock, right, like instead of being immediate that changing temperature
you try to chill it down first by flowing a little bit of that liquid through first.
So that in like a trickle sort of thing, sort of like when you open the tap just a tiny bit
and it's drops of water. I tend to put the example of like, I'm a person that I cannot
jump into a pool right away. I'm sorry, I'm not that kind of person. I go down to the edge
and put my feet down and everything in the water and try to get used to how cold it
is and all that. Similarly with this, it's trying to get the material down to those
temperatures in a much more subtle way much more smooth way so that it doesn't
really get you know destroyed by by that sudden changing in temperature mm-hmm
don't want to shock anything right yep yep yep okay we're uh so chat you
wondering what you're looking at you wondering what's going on here there
SpaceX has spooled up masses here and we have propellants inside of ship 39 here
now we did see the flaps on Starship start moving around that was about four
to five minutes ago so we're just kind of see we're gonna see what they're
doing here now legacy testing from previous Starships they've done like
us what's called the spin prime first the spin prime is basically where
They test the fuel pumps.
They test to make sure that the plumbing works
before you fire the rocket engines.
So we're not 100% sure what we're gonna see here,
but if heritage ship testing is anything,
we should see something happen here
in the next, I don't know, five, maybe six minutes.
We'll see.
I mean, once again, this is the first time we've watched,
we've done tank watching with the Block 3 Starship
on the test stand.
So, you know, if it's a surprise to you guys,
it's gonna be a surprise to us as well.
So, yeah, we should be closer to like three minutes now
at this point.
Right, two minutes.
Yeah, two minutes, all right, cool, cool.
It looks like things are topped off.
If you definitely, I don't think they're,
they shouldn't be loading anything anymore
based off of the subcooler vents.
are definitely die down a lot. I don't know if there is like a purge vent near the end
of this. I know there are a ton of different vents all around this stuff. I know there is
a vent that is off of the new fluids bunker but I don't know if that is going to go before
a test or not. I didn't see that last night. I don't know. We'll have to wait and see
here, possibly of a move.
And from looks quiet now, right?
Yep.
Which is a good sign. You want to start to spool down when you're getting close to a test.
Well, let's see what happens. Let's keep an eye on the vehicle and the base of the vehicle, especially because that's where the action should be if something big happens.
If it's a spin priming it might be a little bit more complicated to see anything down there, but hopefully we do get to see something.
That's the hope at least.
I'm hoping for single engine, but we might get an igniter.
I'm hoping.
We might also see igniter.
I want to see fire today.
Just in the right location and in the right way.
Right.
Yeah.
Guys, the reason why we're not talking is because we're all locked in.
We're staring at the bottom of that chip intently.
I'm not even kidding.
Yeah, my eyes will go dry, I think.
Right?
If I keep staring at this.
All right, should be getting up onto the time now.
Let's see what happens.
Wait for it.
Launch of 39.
for it. Come on, do something. Come on, do something. What do we got? I had seen something
on the left. I think it wasn't really. Yeah, it looks like one of the events on the right
they're kind of kind of huge for a second but it stopped and it looks like it's
intermittent at this point. Now Ryan if we do get a test but one that we cannot see
we should expect like a depress from the ship within a minute or two after right
because I'm seeing venting from the tanks. Did that be the depress of the
ship? Unless that's that doesn't look like a depress that looks like pressure
regulation because it's kind of going in and out in and out.
I mind you it's far away enough that it's not like we can really hear munch
from the vehicle. Yeah.
Well something might have happened maybe or there in a hold or something
But I think that's actually a depress,
because that vent is still going.
Yeah, the liquid oxygen vents, guys,
is about midway up the ship, left-hand side.
I see it turning on and off.
Yeah, it's...
Which, if you're a depress, they don't do that.
That's a pressure regulation, not a depress, to me.
Then let's wait and see what happens.
So once again guys, it might be an igniter or a spin prime test in which case starship out at Massies has a flame bucket and it's in the ground and we can't really see it.
If there's a static fire though, we will see that you'll see a bunch of smoke fly out on the left side of the screen because the deflector goes right to left on your screen here.
So we're just kind of sitting intently like if it's a static if it's a static
fire we're gonna see it if it's a spin prime or an igniter we ain't gonna see
it you know Ryan like historically they usually do an igniter or spin prime test
before they fire one right it would usually do a spin prime especially with
with new engines. And the only reason why I say igniter is because of what they did with,
I think that's deluge activation.
I'm Ron Burgundy. Because I think I see venting off the deluge tanks.
All right, let's see what should mean is it already ran? I don't know. Yeah, that was a day that was
daily's depress. So daily's fired, but I don't know what happened. So days did go off because
that's definitely the data is depress off those tanks. So whatever they did, we didn't really see it.
But that means that feeds the igniter or spin prime test theory, I think at this point, yeah?
Yeah, it could have been the igniters. I know we knew we know the igniters that for B-19 were
pretty loud. I don't know how loud it would be for us for for 39 this far away.
Unless yesterday was just a tanking test and today's today was the spin prime.
But that's also the methane reclaim vent. So they might be already taking the
methane.
So I see a couple of people in chat asking what what would be an igniter
test. Ryan, just clue us in for the for the new tank watchers out there. What's
the igniter test versus the spin prime? Well, the igniters is, I mean, you're
firing off the igniters, although we don't really know exactly what igniters
they use on a Raptor 3 per se. It's certainly not torch igniters anymore,
because they definitely don't make the sound that booster 19s igniters made
when they went off. I know some have been thinking possibly acoustic igniters maybe,
which is basically taking a tuned piece of metal or something and kind of using it to
resonate and accelerate gases to like supersonic speeds and to like auto ignite them and stuff
like that. It's kind of a cool concept. It's a kind of a thinking, but we don't
exactly know what igniters they use. So they could have done a test with those, or
they did a spin prime and yesterday was a tanking test. Honestly, there's really
no way to know unless SpaceX tells us. We think we saw a possible spin
prime yesterday, but the more you think about it, it could have
also been the new purge that goes up into the aft bay of the ship. And
and with the lighting conditions and how hard it is to see under the ship it's
really hard to know exactly what they did so.
But either way the I'll just say this the the deluge depress vent activated
which means they did fire off the deluge and the methane reclaim vent is
running right now which means they are likely detanking the methane so whatever
they did they did it they're done with it and they're detanking so well Alex
what is the deluge system do just you know like I'm trying to just you know
it seems like we don't have a lot of you know if you we have a lot of tank
watches have been here for a long time but just in case anybody's new to this
stuff like I'm thinking will because probably had some people coming in
interested for Martin was do wondering what's going on like why we're
sitting here on a Sunday watching this thing this pointy thing sitting there
what does the daily system do here Alex yeah well it's part of the protection
right for the for the test stand you've got there the flame trench underneath
the ship and you know whenever you fire the engines you need protection right
and the water absorbs all of that heat and pressure from the engines at least
the great majority of it the the flage trench itself still gets a beating
right but the the water sort of attenuates a lot of that that force and energy and
so you know the little bit that actually hits the the flame trench itself then
that can take it right that's that's sort of the point because if you want to
fire those raptors it would not be able to to take it without the deluge now
what happens is that why would they fire the deluge then if they don't
static fire the ship well sometimes you do that because it's part of your
rehearsal, right, for the actual firing. You're testing all of the procedures, you're
going down the line through all of the different countdown events, and one of them
is also firing the deluge, right? That could be just one very simple reason
why you would do that. We've seen that today, for example, with
booster 19. They did not static fire the booster, but by all means it seemed
to be pretty much like a rehearsal of what it will do on a static fire test,
right? So maybe a similar thing happened today with with the ship. They did a spin prime yesterday
and maybe today was a rehearsal or maybe they did an igniter test like Ryan was saying, right?
Like there are things that they could have done with the engines that would not be super visible
because again there's like the the ship stand, right? Where the ship is sitting right now.
There's also the ship skirt itself where the engines are sort of covered around and everything.
It's quite complicated to see and also it goes down to a flamethringer and so because
of that, it also is much more complicated to see what's going on there.
It's much farther away.
There's like a billion different things I can tell you why it's much more complicated.
It's not like it's rocket science or something, right?
It's rocket surgery, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
know, just every single, like facet of engineering all being rolled into one, because you know,
how much difficulty do you want? All of it, right?
Can we, maybe I'm making a lot here. Jay, can you look at Space Coast Live for a second
of 39A? I want to point out something, and maybe Ryan can help me out. Are they testing
the Starship Tank Farm? No way.
Where? Wait, what?
venting at 39a beyond where the Falcon 9 pad is. It's sort of where they have the tank
farm stuff. You see where the transporter detector is? You see those clouds coming up?
Oh yeah.
I'm testing the tank farm for Starship at 39a.
Geez, they might be.
I'm trying to think, um, uh, standby.
Uh, I need to grab pictures to orient myself onto where that actually is.
Give me, give me a moment.
I think it's in the right direction for the, for the starting tank form.
I think it is long, but you may have a minute.
Yeah.
The reason why I was, I was looking at that folks is because somebody was
sharing in our back channels that the was called Blue Angels did a flyby of the
pan and in that same picture I was like wait what's that and there was venting
over the the Starship pan and not paying attention all to the planes because I
was like wait wait wait that's different that that's not there normally
right so that made me go to Spaceco's live and then I saw the venting still
going on and I was like, wait, that's not usually where venting is. Like the the the
pad systems for Falcon 9, the liquid oxygen tank for me sort of to way to the left in
this point of view. So yeah, the only thing that that will be cryogenic and venting in
that direction will be anything related to to Starship.
So we are looking, okay, I'm just trying to get my bearings using similar pictures.
So while you're doing that, on the right, we have Starship and on the left we also...
We also have Starship.
All right, all right.
Jay has the replay here.
This is a replay from we think seeing the daily was just on fire.
fire we got to look in the bottom left here all right let's send it what do we
got oh yeah yep absolutely dude bottom left look at that see so it's behind
those plants as if you look at the bottom left there's some with what's
impress yeah yeah yeah was was that the vendor that I said oh or is one after
that. Because I saw a vent to the left and it was like, oh,
yeah, it was weird to me.
I mean, the other thing that go ahead, Ryan.
No, I'm just saying it's it's really hard to tell, but that
venting
could be coming from the methane side of 39 A.
Oh, you're talking about what's going on at the Cape so you got me to look at it two different things. No, no, it's good
So this is what that's what I was trying to say Ryan was going and looking at he's looking at him right now
He's looking at a map of the tank farm with a magnifying glass going
Where does that they come? Yeah, they gotta get ready. They gotta get ready at Starship pad for for Starship
Here hopefully it could be I
mean the problem is is with our angle
that covers either the LN2 or the methane side, I think, that could be that main vent
in the center that the LN2 tanks. I don't know. They might be offloading stuff and that's
what we're seeing. I don't think they'd be actually testing it. They still got a
long ways to go before they run that, but they could be far enough along with one
side of the tank farm that they're actually able to run liquid through but just not run
it to the pad, which they did a lot at Starbase for pad 2.
So they might be running liquids, whether it's LOX or LN2 or something, they might
be running it through pumps and sub coolers just kind of run in the system.
I see people already going into SEL chat, into the Spacecos live chat, hi Cody.
I don't know, it's really there to tell.
That's why you should keep watching that. You should have it on a different tower or something and chiming.
I don't have another monitor.
Or another monitor, yeah. If you can hear that, sure.
Here at NSF we are pros at monitoring the space situation. We are the best monitors of the space situation.
as you can see what you see on your screen here.
So on the right, we have SpaceX's test in
with ship 39 testing.
That's in Southern Texas and on the left, that's 39A.
That's pad 39A at the Cape.
So on the widest Texas on the left is Florida.
The reason why we're going, oh, oh, oh, it made some smoke.
It did a thing is because SpaceX is working
on a Starship pad at complex 39A.
That's just like, let's say just down the street
from where we saw Artemis II take off
last week or two weeks ago
two weeks ago
so
you know i i was often telling people uh... you know i got asked a lot during
the arid was too coverage is like why aren't they landing on the moon why are
they landing on the moon
well the landers are ready yet
but on the left side of your screen guys really got the pad that's going to
launch the lander so if that thing is twitching right we're going to be
like what what
hey hello
hey i don't know what it is
I still want to add that the caveat into this is that the 39A pad is still about six months
behind pad 2 at Starbase.
There's still a ton of tanks that need to be delivered and installed.
They need to finish installing the hoods.
There's still a lot of service structure work to install.
They need to bring the IB proofing or build a new one and test all the clamps.
They still have to water bag test the sticks.
I know they have at least,
I think they might have an actuator installed.
They might have lifted one a little while ago.
There's still a ton of work to be finished on this pad
before it launches anything.
So I just want to put that caveat in there.
Hopefully it'll be ready to go by the end of the year.
But of course we have to wait and see.
And then of course it needs a vehicle.
And Starbase is the one that has to build them
because they can't build them at the Cape right now.
not yet, they don't have a factory there, so, you know, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Rome
wasn't built in the day, but Pad 2 was. No, no. Yeah, that could be the lock side running and they're
running the pumps that they've got installed. It's possible that they're doing that. It depends
on how hooked up it is, but of course the only images we usually get these days are maybe
sad images or anything, or a really low angle, long range,
low angle, flyover shots, which kind of makes it hard
to distinguish some things sometimes.
But and we haven't had a Falcon launch at 39A in a while
to give us a view of it.
So hopefully that changes in like what, two weeks?
All right, so if you're watching you've been watching tank watching with us here
We are we've been covering what SpaceX is doing with booster at 19 and ship 39 down at
Down at the Texas testing and launch site that noted colloquially colloquially known as starbase
Oh, man, I nailed it on the second try that's sweet colloquially
All right, so we've been doing some we watching them do some testing down there. They did
They did do some testing with the booster a little bit earlier in the day at 2 30 local time and now
4 30 was but it was about 4 45 when we saw that deluge test go off something like that
They did do some testing with the booster as well
No, we know what it is what it looks like at my yeah, that's my guess. Yeah
Hopefully, maybe tomorrow's doubleheader, if they do a doubleheader again, maybe tomorrow
is igniters on both.
And then the day after that, maybe it's like a 13 engine and then a single engine static
fire.
And then maybe after that, the doubleheader is a 33 engine and a six engine static fire.
Maybe we're just going to get doubleheaders for the rest of the time going through.
And the extra test that 39 did was the commissioning of the methane tank farm, like with booster
19 original time around.
So I don't know.
I'd be totally fine with these double headers, but that's some long streams.
possibly.
Well, that's what we do here at NSF.
If you're wondering, guys, you know, we're our time time with the ears closed and
closed and down because I can't think straight, not going to lie to you.
But if you want to keep watching the action, we do have live channels.
We do post about what like any action that you might see on social media, right?
We're out, we're out there on X, we're out there on, you know, we obviously have the
YouTube, EllisR has all the socials, he brings up the social game, Instagram, Facebook.
We got, we got all the good stuff up there.
Uh, we'll, we'll tell you about what's going on, or if you want to watch this live,
you want to just do your own tank watching without hearing my annoying voice.
You can do that on, uh, with Spacecoast Live.
We have, we have Spacecoast Live, we have Starbase Live, we have McGregor Live.
So, Space Coast is whatever's going down at the Cape, Cape Canaveral, right?
Starbase is what you see on the screen, whatever's going on at Starbase, the McGregor SpaceX's
test sites where, Alex, I do believe we saw one of those test stands void itself the
other day.
Yeah, yeah.
Thankfully, they have a couple of other test stands with also two test stands.
So, two test stands with two bays each, so they still have like four different
locations to test.
They've gone from six to four basically.
It's not a huge deal in that sense and they've received testing afterwards so it didn't
seem to be that big of a deal in terms of the testing cadence.
But yeah, EJ and I will point out the live stream for tomorrow is already in our channel
so go out there to the live tab and click the notification bell because when we go live
tomorrow you probably want to be notified.
Yeah, yep. Yep. So I think that we might be done with action here for the day with the ship. So that is that that is time to wrap Ryan. Thanks for being with us. This was great.
Yeah, pleasure as always. I'm going to go try to get some food and then I got to work tonight. So this. Yeah, I do need coffee.
You need coffee, lots of it.
Ready to do it again tomorrow?
Sure, why not?
how long I last. Either way, we are going to have testing of booster and ship for the
next couple of days which is really awesome to say and it is both for the same flight.
So Rimey tune in and watch with us. It is going to be a lot of fun.
And Alex with Mad bars and rimes. Alex give us a rhyme before we leave, before we wrap.
Rap before we wrap. Alex let's do it.
bars on Mars. Well, take you out to a bar, I guess.
No. Oh, oh, oh, oh, whatever.
Alex, thanks for being with us.
It's always when you listen to Rapture.
Anyways, yeah, sure.
I'll I'll be next here again, again, sometimes soon, I guess.
We'll see.
It's been a pleasure.
You need. Yeah.
No. And, you know, we had Chris B.
hosting the stream a little bit earlier, and then we have Jay in the back end.
pulling all the levers, turning all the knobs,
and then Caesar out there.
He's out there giving us that shot on the left here.
Caesar, thank you very much.
Anyway, we're gonna wrap this up here, guys.
Once again, you can keep watching the live stream,
you know, but you can't stay here.
So, it's closing time.
I've been EJ your host here.
Don't, no, hey, we'll get claims.
Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.
You don't have to go home,
but you can't stay here, all right?
Hope everybody has a great Sunday, great rest of your weekend.
Thank you very much for watching, guys.
We're done for the day here.
We gotta be back tomorrow.
See you guys.
Thank you.
And cut.
Good cut.
And here we go.
["Best of WJ's Ignition"]
There's the WJ's Ignition.
And...
["Best of WJ's Ignition"]
Well, right now.
Did you see what I'm doing?
Back to the room?
Yeah, we're done.
Put that in the big bag.
Back to home, you don't have a lot of work to do.
It's a good job.
We'll start the perfect flow.
Propulsion continues to be normal.
We do have an observation.
Keep with us.
343 at both steps.
It's orange!
Water tower is in flight!
Yeah!
Bingo! Right in the center!
Where's Jack? There it is!
That looks surreal!
That's not what we want to see!
Oh my god!
Thanks. You bet.
We don't need any more of these.