Hi everybody, welcome back to the show.
Today's episode is all about the IFT 3 flight for the Starship
Super Heavy from Boca Chica Starbase, Texas.
We're going to talk about the mission that's going to be
happening during this flight because it's impressive what
SpaceX is going to be trying to accomplish with this one as
opposed to the IFT 2 hot sieging was super impressive.
They got that pretty much right. Now we know the booster blew up
and we know the ship blew up, but there are some things that
they could be doing with the next flight that are absolutely
necessary for the Artemis 3 mission.
And these just came up a little bit ago and I want to show you a
few of these things happening. The human landing system
activities which were this is part of a slide from a NASA
presentation the other day. They show here that several
milestones completed including a vacuum optimized Raptor
performance test that successfully confirmed the
engine can be started in the extreme colder conditions result
resulting from extended time and space.
I can believe their second Starship flight test and are
quickly moving towards their third, which will include a
propellant transfer demonstration.
That's what we're talking about today, the propellant transfer
demonstration. Because what they need to do is
they need to send starships to orbit around the Earth in that
they have tankers of Starship propellant in orbit in.
The Starship will mate with those tankers and then they'll
transfer propellant from the tanker to the ship and then the
ship will go to the moon or wherever else it's going to be
going. Right.
So let's take a look at this real quick because I think this
is an important thing that we have to talk about today.
The you see the starships here circling these right now and we
see the propellant tanker is it's almost twice as high as you
can see. It's about, I did not not a
perfectly straight line there, but it's pretty close and as you
can see there's a little bit of a, it's a little bit different
here, it's a little bit taller, little bit bigger.
And if we go back to this slide, completed the 2nd Starship
flight test and then quickly towards the third which will
include a propellant transfer demonstration.
Now, do they mean a full transfer?
And do they have a propellant tanker ready to go at Starbase?
And the answer to that is probably not.
OK. So more than likely, and this is
actually being confirmed by a few sources now, this SpaceX
will be doing a fluid transfer or a propellant transfer from
something to something, from some tank to another tank while
they're doing their IFT 3 flight.
So they're going to get into space.
They broke the carbon line with the IFT 2 flight.
So that means they're technically in space.
And this is what this NASA tipping point agreement is that
SpaceX signed a while ago. So right here, as you can see,
SpaceX of Hawthorne Large scale Flight demonstration to transfer
10 metric tons of cryogenic propellant, specifically liquid
oxygen between tanks on a Starship vehicle.
SpaceX will collaborate with a Glen and Marshall.
Now these are tipping point selections for NASA for the
Artemis program. So 10 metric tons of cryogenic
propellant between tanks on a Starship vehicle.
So not only are we going to see a transfer of Starship between a
tanker, the big propellant tanker in orbit at some point,
but this next flight, the I FT3 flight is going to be
transferring propellant from one tank to another tank while it's
flying. Now this is incredible and these
things have been confirmed a few times on social media.
And you know, one of the one of the people that confirmed this
was Michael Sheets. Of course, space reporter.
Everybody knows Michael Sheets, Mike Sheets, the man and NBC
guy. So he has space like the third
Space Flight will include a propellant transfer.
And then he reached out to NASA in the in the later tweet, and
we'll talk about that too. Hawkins didn't address the third
Starship test flights plans in her remarks.
So I've reached out to NASA and SpaceX to clarify what
propellant transfer demonstration means in this
context. So we already know that the that
SpaceX and NASA had the tipping point consideration.
And then we're going to take a look at the update from Michael
Sheets. NASA confirms A Starship
propellant transfer demonstration could happen as
soon as the third test flight test of the SpaceX rocket,
although the plan is subject to change, and that's what's
important here. The subject to change always
happens with Space Flight because things might not line up
properly for the I FT3 flight. They may not be ready for it.
They may not have the right craft properly prepared for this
flight for the propellant demonstration, the transfer
demonstration. So we're gonna see in the near
future if this is actually a thing, we're gonna have to wait
for SpaceX to come out and say that the propellant transfer is
going to be happening with the IFT 3 flight.
Now, this tipping point agreement, let's take another
quick look at this cryogenic 10 tons of cryogenic propellant.
I know I'm behind that stuff is behind me.
But I'll tell you what it says 10 metric tons of cryogenic
propellant, specifically liquid oxygen between tanks and a
Starship vehicle. That means they're not going to
be transferring it to the to the propellant tanker, because the
tanker's a whole different beast that's basically a Starship and
a half, but full of propellant that they have to shoot up into
orbit. And have we already seen sort of
a a mock up of this? Not sure yet, but we'll get into
that a little bit because that's that's a fun one to think about
too. Now, another thing that's
interesting, another fun thing to think about for the IFT 3
flight. Toby Lee, the internal date for
IFT 3 is scheduled for Christmas Day, but that's almost
guaranteed to slip. OK, so they're still working on
the pad, they're still working on Starbase itself, they're
still working on the launch area of Starbase.
And they have 20 days to get this right, to to get all the
propellant loading, all the all the static fires done, all the
stacking. They have to stack, unstack,
restack, do fit checks, things like that, in order for them to
actually fly this. Could they do that in three
weeks? History has shown that they
can't really move that fast, and that seems like a horrible thing
to say. The SpaceX can't move really
fast because they're moving faster than everybody else ever,
like, literally ever. They're they're the fastest
Space Flight company ever. But can they do this in three
weeks? Well, we've seen them static
fire numerous times. It takes about, it takes a few
days to do a static fire. The static fire itself is only
like a couple seconds, you know, like a quick burst.
They have to move the booster and the ship down to the flight
area and then they have to lift the the the booster onto the pad
and around to the mount. Now that takes about a day,
right? So then they have to do static
fire. They have, they have to do,
actually, they have to do propellant filled tests, they
have to check out systems. So those usually take the the
system. Checkouts usually take another
day. Propellant fill tests usually
take three or four days altogether, so the booster
itself 5-6 days. So they have to do the same
thing with the ship, 5-6 days, about a week each, so there's
two weeks. Then they have to do stacking,
they have to move things around. They have to make sure that
everything works properly when it's stacked couple days there
and then they have to do, you know, propellant load in the
stacked area. They have to get, they have to
get certification from the FAA as well and that may take a
while. So they may be able to stack it.
They may be able to stack it by Christmas Day, but usually in
anything tech, anything tech. I've worked in tech for 15 years
and engineering, you know, I've been, I've been around engineers
my whole life. I know how this works.
Usually when they set an internal date, this is for
people to aspire to. So the internal date, Christmas
Day. This is something for the
engineers and the people at Starbase to aspire to get done
because everyone's going on break, You know, IFT 3 is
scheduled for Christmas Day. It's almost guaranteed a slip.
Yeah, Toby Lee, you're right, it's almost guaranteed a slip.
But the internal dates are to push people forward so they can
continue working as hard as they can and work those long extra
hours so they can get everything done before they go home for
Christmas break. They get they want to get
everything as as good as possible, as done as possible,
because they do have a Christmas break at Starbase.
They do have Christmas breaks and you know, holiday breaks for
people at SpaceX. So if they know there's not
going to be a big team there for a week, maybe some people will
be taking vacations for a week or a week and a half.
And they're not going to have the full staff of people there.
So there's a possibility they're just pushing this through so
that they get as much work done before the break as possible.
So more than likely I FT3 will slip past past Christmas.
Unfortunately for us, you know we probably let's just how about
tell me in the comments, do you think it's possible Tell me in
the comments because I don't know man.
It seems like it it might be possible if they get everything
absolutely perfectly done right now, like have to do it right
now, like literally they have to start stacking this thing like
as soon as possible. But is it possible and did we
already see a propellant tanker test?
Could this be the article? That could be the propellant
tanker test model? The ship 26?
They did a static fire on it. Could this be IFT 3?
Because they have to get the propellant transfer alike
perfectly done. They have to do it perfect in
the first few flights event in order for it to function
properly. For the future of SpaceX and for
Artemis and etcetera. So This is why would they why
would they satisfy this if they're not going to use it in
the future unless they were doing some new plumbing for the
next Raptor engines or something like that.
It it's there's a anything is possible anything is possible
here. So the IFT 3 flight it's going
to transfer propellant in the ship itself.
So in there's going to be a tanker to tanker or a tank to
tank transfer and ship 26. Possibly going to be a a in
orbit propellant transfer vehicle.
Or it could have just been a demonstration test to to check
out flow or you know any anything's possible with this
thing. So could this be IFT 3 possibly
too. Could they be flying IFT 3?
And then there's some, some set back or there's some.
There's some weird stuff with that too, if you think about it,
because this doesn't have, doesn't have any wings, it
doesn't have any heat shield, it doesn't have anything that the
other ships that have already flown have or have been tested,
you know, ship 24/7 even had all those things, had the heat
shield and the wings and everything.
But this has nothing. This is a bare fuselage.
It's just a nose cone and a tube, you know, in the internals
of course in the engines. But could this be the IFT 3
Flame? And I've been thinking about
that a little bit because it just has to demonstrate the in
orbit propellant transfer. And if they don't really care,
like how it functions after that, then why not just send
something up that's just has tanks in it, you know?
And they get that, they get that job done.
It doesn't have to land perfectly.
It can burn up. Sorry.
You can belly smack her in the off the coast of Kauai like
anything else could. And it doesn't need a heath
shield. It doesn't really.
I mean, does it need wings if it's being propelled through
space? Not at that point.
But when it comes back in it can't really guide itself as
well without the wings. So there's a, there's a slight
possibility that this could be some sort of transfer protocol
and they just shoot it up there and you know, hope.
I mean, they can't really. I mean, they can steer it with
the Raptor engines, but not as well with wings, not as well as
with wings. So there's a possibility,
slight, slight possibility. I'm going to give it a 2%
possibility that this thing could be the propellant transfer
ship. But let me know what you think
in the comments, because I want to.
I want to hear some some ideas from some people, because
without any way to steer this thing other than the Raptor
engines, it might be too dangerous at this point because
this is totally a a test article.
Like Starship is still a test article, it's still a still a
test a test ship. So this might be a little bit
too much at this point without the wings of the heat shield or
anything like that. Plus they have to demonstrate
that all the other things are going to work.
So, you know, they have to make sure that everything works and
that the propellant tanks don't blow up, you know, And there's
only one of these and there's a bunch of other, there's four
other ships, you know, that are that are at Starbase right now
that are like raring to go until the next Raptor engines are
installed on the next ship. So we're going to see, hopefully
by, I'm going to guess, February, then they're going to
get this thing ready because they're going to work really
fast until December 25th and I've been down there during
Christmas. It gets dead.
There's barely anybody there for about a week, so they're going
to lose about a week's worth of time.
And you know, just side of the road broadcasting when I was
down there, I I barely saw anybody else.
The only other people that I really saw there were security
guards and Jessica Kirsch and a couple other people would like
wander through. But there was never any, like
never any like real big presence of Starship facility operators
or engineers or anybody working on the ships themselves.
So that happened last year too. So if history does repeat
itself, there's a possibility that, you know, this, like
Starbase basically shuts down for a week and 1/2.
So they're going to push hard through December and then the
end of December, they're going to take a week to reconfigure,
get everybody ready for the new year, and then they're going to
push hard to get IFT 3 off the ground.
They would really love to get it done by the end of this year
though, because they have five flights per year according to
their current contract. And if they can get a third one
off by the end of the year, they could possibly deter another.
They could get three done out of the five and then they restart
on January 1st with five more. So, and they can always, if they
need it, they can get more. So that might not even be an
issue going forward. So it it could be a small thing
that they just have to reapply for, you know, and they're
probably already in the process of them.
So they have to prove this out and then we'll see.
That's pretty much it like we're going to see what happens, but I
don't see a flight happening by the end of this year.
Also, there's one other really cool thing that I wanted to show
you, Jared Isaacman. So the Polaris, Dawn mission
commander, and this is for the Hubble Space Telescope, and
we're all familiar with the Hubble Space Telescope, like, so
much cool stuff for the Hubble. NASA was working to resume
science operations of the Hubble Space Telescope after it entered
safe Mode November 23rd due to an ongoing gyroscope issue.
Hubble's instruments are stable and the telescope is in good
health, so everything's working properly on Hubble.
The gyroscopes went down. So they had to take this thing
whole like completely offline because the gyroscopes, this
thing is old. You know, Hubble's, Hubble's
old, decades old. And then Jared Eisenman says put
us in coach. OK, so that's.
So if you're not familiar with the Polaris program, Polaris
program is using SpaceX technology, Falcon 9 rockets and
Crew Dragons to basically go to orbit for regular people to go
to orbit. A very, very cool team of people
to go to orbit and they're going to be doing some specific
demonstrations to show that human spaceflight for regular
people and discovery missions and science missions for regular
people is possible. So Jared says put us in coach
they've been training for Polaris for since they announced
it. And they're they're doing
flights, they're doing parachuting.
They're doing everything that like a, like a NASA astronaut
would do. But they're like, I wouldn't say
they're normal people. I would say they're exceptional
people that are doing exceptional things.
But they aren't NASA astronauts. You know, they're, they're not
trained by NASA. They didn't have to go through
decades of training in the Air Force or the Marines or
something like that in order to get to this position.
Jared is a pilot. But the other thing is you can
go through training and that's where they're that's what
they're doing here. They're going through training
to do these incredible missions to to do things like this.
And there was a couple more comments that were impressive
here. Do you think it would be best to
repair Hubble or recover or preserve and preserve with
Starship? Both can eventually be done,
said Jared. Jared.
So Hubble repairs, we know that Hubble's been repaired a few
times. There are, there's use cases for
Hubble, of course. So much science has been done
with Hubble. We've discovered so many things
and we can continue to discover things.
Both can eventually be done now, STSS TS125 said.
Problem is, Hubble needs more than just a boost.
It needs repairs. How do you expect to do this
without the shuttle capabilities?
It was hard work then, with the best only vehicle capable of
such work. Now, Jared said replacement
computers and gyros are not the size of refrigerators anymore.
Now STS 125 says. I get that.
I'm thinking more about how do you plan to get up to the body
of Hubble and do the work with the resources, especially the
Canadarm, or without the resources?
It's what they wanted to say without the resources,
especially the Canadarm, because basically the space shuttle
would fly up, open up its hatch, and people would, you know,
transfer from the shuttle to the to the to the telescope via the,
you know, via the ship. But now Jared said a study has
already been done with this. So all good.
Like, Jared's like, we can do it.
Let's just go like NASA, please just let us go up there.
Why aren't you let us letting us go up there?
I don't know what the deal is, but why aren't you just letting
us do this? And you know, Jared is a
exceptional human being. He's done so many wonderful
things. And he is a proponent of human
spaceflight, continues to work hard to kind of lay the
foundation for future spaceflight.
For I keep calling them regular people or normal people, but
they are exceptional people doing this right now.
But eventually, decades down the line, everybody will be able to
go to space, which is insane to think about because these are
things that we thought about and people have thought about since
the dawn of the space age and since the dawn of the Wright
Brothers. Like, how can we get to the
moon? And they've been thinking about
this for hundreds of thousands of years.
Like, how do we get up there? This is the foundation, this
the, this is the legwork that needed to be done.
Jared and his teams will be like basically go down in history is
some of the first people to do this other than through a
government because governments have deep pockets and they also
have the resources to hire people that will get these jobs
done. Engineers, scientists, etcetera.
They can get these jobs done. Now we have for profit companies
like SpaceX and we also have billionaires like Jared who's
like, I'm going to do this cool stuff.
Can we work together? I got all this money.
Like, yeah, sure. I I do like so much wonderful
things through Saint Jude and helping people out.
But shift for payments, things like that, like his, his
company's make bazillions of dollars.
Jared is like, I'm a, I'm a, you know, an extreme kind of person.
I would like to go to space, please, SpaceX, take my money,
You know, the meme. Take my money.
And yeah, so it's like, that's what he did to SpaceX.
Like I want to do these cool things.
How can we do this rationally and get these jobs done?
Because I want to. I want to be.
I want to be the guy, you know and that's it takes a certain
kind of person to do that and Jared is that person.
So yeah, I think this is possible.
I think it's just really cool. It's just a cool little side
thing that we had to talk about today.
I thought it was really neat. But there's there's like one
other thing that I want to tell you about because I know if you
went this far along this rant that I've been going on today.
SpaceX has been talking about having like 8 to 10 propellant
transfer vehicles on their ship shipped to transfer to to the
tanker from the tanker to the ship and NASA just came through
with a high teens number Hawkins estimated high teens is driven
by concerns over propellant loss known as boil off at the depot.
So these depots high teens so with SpaceX and Elon were saying
like 8 you know and then they're saying high teens.
So it just basically double S it, you know, like OK, high
teens, they're going to send eight or they're going to send
15 tankers going to boil off because basically the sun is
beating down on these things and they're not complete.
Like the molecules in the propellant leak out after a
while. And it's just like what can you
do, right? Like it's just physics, it's
just that's how it works. So boil off happens unless
SpaceX can launch these ships immediately to, you know, they
they might be able to send these like eight tankers up in the
same 48 hours. And if that's the case, you
know, one or two from the Cape and then one or two from Texas,
one or two from the Cape, one or two from tech.
You know, back and forth, back and forth, Get 8 to 10 up there
and then send the ship up. That's going to be incredible.
Is that possible by Artemis 3? Now they're kind of pushing back
Artemis 3 to 2027 now, which is, you know it's kind of concerning
but also it's spaceflight and the initial the initial time
frames for this were ridiculous to begin with.
Everybody knew this in the spaceflight industry that the
the time frames for this were ridiculous like we're not going
to get you know Artemis 3 to to the moon by 2024.
You know like it. It just it's it's a ridiculous
timeline and the the idea was just put it out there and then
of course it's NASA and it's the government So you can kind of
push back a little bit and you can get the the time frames that
you need. But if the International
Astronomical Congress didn't specify a number only mentioned
the need for multiple launches Hawkins estimated high teens
achieving the Artemis schedule imaging the fuel loss requires
rapid successful successive launches.
These will occur from Boca Chica Texas and Kennedy Space Center
at 39 A on a six day rotation. So boom boom boom, boom.
You know that that's it's going to be insane.
And we also have a website So if you want to learn about this
stuff, Space News pod.com. Go check out SpaceX news there's
numerous other things you can do here.
SpaceX NASA Space Flight you can learn about a lot of Starship
stuff. So yeah, please go check out
Space News pod.com. And also if you get a second our
sponsor is starshipshirts.com. They help us out and we can, you
know, we can get you Starship based shirts, merch hats, stuff
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starshipshirts.com as well, So Spacexnet and Spaceflight at
spacenewspod.com. I just relaunched this last
week, so just take a look around.
Let me know what you think in the comments below about the the
tanker transfer protocols and when do you think, when do you
think any of this is going to happen?
You know, is it is the tanker transfer going to happen in IFT
3? When is it going to happen?
Is it going to happen before December 25th?
It's going to be, it's going to be close.
So if you'd like to read, there you go, Space News pod.com.
So thanks everybody for tuning in today.
I really do appreciate you and I wanna say thank you again to
everybody who is a member of the channel.
I cannot do this without you. We have a
patreonpatreon.com/space News Pod and also catch us on X at
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Space News pod and I think that's it for now.
So take care, everybody. And please, you know, take care
of yourselves and each other and I will see you in the next
episode. OK.
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All right. Bye.
Bye everybody.