SpaceX is preparing for one of the most intense flights of
human spaceflight. Ever down at Starbase Texas
SpaceX has a fully stacked Starship.
Booster 7 and ship 24 on the Launchpad and they're shaping up
to do a wet dress rehearsal sometime in the near future.
So they do the ground systems, they elope propellant into the
thing. They check all the pipes, they
check all the cables, check all the electronics, check, all the
systems in between the ground and the Rocket and also the
communication systems, all of that gets checked during this
wet dress rehearsal. And there's another thing that's
really close by to the fully stack, Starship.
Ship 25 is on ped, be right now, right?
Next to the fully stacked Starship, ship 25.
It's odd pad B. It's really close.
And if they do a wet dress rehearsal, and if something were
to happen to the booster or to ship 24, ship, 25 could be in
danger. So are they going to be moving
ship 25 possibly back to the Bay at some point tomorrow?
So road closures happen at Starbase when they're going to
do some sort of testing or moving something from one site
to the next say it's about a mile and a half distance between
the production site in the launch site so you get there in
a couple minutes but if you're 150-foot tall rocket like ship
25, it's going to take a little while.
So on Monday, January twenty third, twenty twenty-three. 3 8
a.m. to 8 p.m. there's a road closure and on Tuesday, January
24th and 2023. There's another route closure
schedule. So something may be happening
and one of those things could be a wet dress rehearsal of the
rocket. It also, there could be the
movement of ship 25 before the wet dress rehearsal starts.
So the main move ship 25 out of that pad off.
Head be it back to the bay and they removed it from the bay
because they needed to put another Starship in the In the
bay to dismantle it. So ship 25.
It has the Raptor engines on it, it's pretty close to a static
fire, it has to do some testing for cryogenic testing, and
pressure, testing and things like that.
In order for it to do a static fire, the, the the fact that
it's so close to this ship to this fully stacked, start ship,
that's ready for a wet dress rehearsal.
It's dangerous. So I believe they're going to be
moving ship, 25 away from there and then they're going to be
moving towards The full wet dress, rehearsal of a fully
stacked. Starship, has it been done with
this one yet in? This is crazy.
Cool. Crazy, crazy, cool.
Because this shows that SpaceX is almost ready for the flight
of ship 24. And booster 7.
Now, what do they have to do for this wet dresser?
So, basically, everything except for launch the vehicle, they
have to put propellant in it. If the test the ground systems
and all the ground systems means every line that fuel The booster
in the ship and also the towers are going to be testing the
tower as well. All the tanking all the D
tanking, they're testing all of that before the actual launch.
So, what's going to happen? After the wet dress rehearsal,
we're going to kind of jump around here a little bit.
They're going to be moving ship, 24 off the top of booster 7.
And if anything were to happen during this wet dress rehearsal,
they're going to have to move either the ship or the booster
back to one of those Bay's in. In order to fix it, you know,
during the wet dress, rehearsal of the SLS, we've seen it
numerous times, they had to move the ship from the launch site,
back to the high Bay, you know, there are there thousand
breaking points between the ground area, the ground systems
in the ship, and I'm just going to be realistic with you here.
Because I love the idea that this goes perfect, the first
time and I, we have to think logically here.
There are so many Failure points in between the ground systems in
the ship. They're continuing testing shows
that this is almost ready to launch, right?
And if anything goes wrong with the booster, anything goes wrong
with a ship, they have to dismantle it.
And they have to take the booster or the ship back to the
bay and say is this worth fixing or should we move on to another
booster and to another ship your ship. 25 is right there.
You know, and the next boosters ready, it's all All ready to go.
I mean they have the the Raptor twos on the booster right now
and if something were to happen it it's like we can't really do
anything with this booster anymore.
We realized this isn't going to be the one they can stand down.
They don't have to launch this. There's no there's no law saying
SpaceX has to launch. This booster, they could even
though we don't want it to, they could take this booster and move
it back to the bay and say, hey yeah, this is a catastrophic
failure. We have to move on from this.
But if everything goes well, think about that, if everything
goes, well SpaceX will soon be launching the Starship for the
first orbital flight test. They have to remove the ship
ship 24 before they do that and they're going to do a static
fire of the booster now, there's other things in the path of the
flight that may get in the way. And these are kind of
speculation at this point, but I want to tell you about them
because it's not happening for this flight.
It may happen for flight to In that they're building a deluge
system down there. The Deluge system is basically
sound suppression for the rocket because this is a, even though
it's out the middle of nowhere, the booster is the most powerful
rocket that's ever been built and the blast from this rocket
could shatter Windows could hurt people.
You know could hurt things, you know, material things Vehicles,
Etc, miles and miles away. And the suppression system.
The Deluge system could mitigate that to some point, right?
And they're moving these tanks from from Florida, over to Boca
Chica right now. The Rada barge right now and the
moving them over to Boca Chica where starbases and those tanks
will be hopefully partially, possibly all of them could be
for a deluge system that shoots water under the booster.
As it ignites in all of the force, it's going down creates
energy, which ripples the are basically and shoot sound
everywhere, but the water shoots towards that sound all around it
and kind of mitigates those those those vibrations
basically. And also they have to think
about the orbital launch Mount, it's going to vibrate like crazy
in. This water is going to stop it
from vibrating. Because if they don't stop this
thing from vibrating from those 33 engines, the something
catastrophic could go wrong with the ground systems and if
something goes wrong with the ground systems, that's hard to
replace building a rocket. Even though it's one of the most
incredible Feats that humans can do building a gigantic rocket.
Like this is insanely difficult, the ground systems can't be
replaced as quickly as a rocket. So think about that for a
second. Would they launch this rocket?
Knowing that there could be some damage from these 33 boosters
and set them back. Six months to repair this
orbital launch Mount or would they just bring in some water?
I mean, what's the logical? What's the logical explanation
in your head where they just go? Okay, let's just whatever this
fly it or would they go, you know, this is a really important
Mission because in a couple of years NASA is going to depend on
this rocket and they're going to depend on this system, including
the orbital launch Mountain at all.
The electronics, all the pipes, everything on the ground, that's
built to blast this rocket into orbit.
And to the Moon, NASA and people are depending on this to work
perfectly every single time and of Space X were to get this
Deluge system in place. In the next few weeks, they
could possibly test it a few times before.
Or what edelen says late, February, sometime in March, for
the launch of the Starship. So there is a silver lining
here, you know, even though it may stop the launch from
happening in the meantime, you know, in the time that we're
here right now, for the next few weeks, we do want to see a
launch, of course, like as soon as possible, I think I'll be
amazing, but also do it, right? You know, I don't think Elon is
ever done anything. That's sort of half-hearted, you
know, like if you're going to do it, do it right?
And In Shotwell is, in charge of this stuff now.
So Gwynne Shotwell in charge of Starbase in charge of Starship.
So there's no reason why they wouldn't.
Just hold off a little bit and do it properly.
And here's one of the things that I want to show you as well,
and for anybody that's listening right now, there's a TFR in
place for January, 23rd in January 24th in the TFR is the
really important part, because this is a no-fly zone no-fly
zone around Starbase. So basically, anything up to
14,000 feet from the surface up to 14,000 feet and this means
that they are thinking about things that could go wrong.
So if you load propellant into this gigantic rocket, the most
Propel has ever been loaded into any rocket ever, basically, the
biggest rocket ever needs the most fuel ever.
And anything goes wrong. If there's any sort of ignition,
that's not supposed to happen. They need to make sure that
people are safe planes that are flying overhead or safe people,
you know, plays. It are flying near, it are safe
because there's a there's a keep out Zone around it as well, not
just up, so anything that's 30,000 feet up, you know, that's
should be fine but, you know, low-flying aircraft up to 14,000
feet, you know, those those would be damaged.
So anything around there is cut off from the rest of, you know,
from from the whole area down there.
So you can't fly. Over it.
So that was an important one in SpaceX just recently on Twitter,
it was January 12th, I believe January 12.
They said teams are stepping into a series of tests prior to
Starships. First flight test in the weeks
ahead including full stack, wet dress rehearsals and hold down
firing of booster. Sevens 33 Raptors so they are
ready for this in the weeks ahead full stack wet dress,
rehearsals So this could be numerous wet dress rehearsals
and hold down firing of booster 733 Raptor.
It could they be doing a few wet dress rehearsals just to make
sure that everything is okay, series of tests prior to
Starships, first flight, test in the weeks ahead.
So they think SpaceX actually put this out on their Twitter
test prior to start his first flight tests in the weeks ahead.
Could they meet a few weeks or could they mean 8 to 12?
12. 16 20 weeks, that's weeks ahead.
Also, we got to remember, like, I was saying before, if there's
a leak, if there's something that goes wrong during this wet
dress rehearsal, something could stop them from doing this and
they could take some time. They may even take a week maybe
two weeks to fix a leak, and then they're going to have to do
a whole series of tests again, to make sure that the leak is
fixed. So they could do a small, small
leak test. Instead of doing a full wet
dress rehearsal. Do Ending on where this leak is
and I'm just being pragmatic here.
You know, I'm not I'm not here to be at somebody's Downer or
anything like that. I'm here to to, you know, bring
you up to speed with what's going on down there.
But also, we have to be very logical about this because this
is rocket science. And this is very dangerous and
this could have consequences that could last for years.
So you have to think about those things.
If there's some sort of leak, if there's something, some Faulty.
Something could be a pipe, could be a rivet, could be anything.
It could be a wire could be electric.
Could be anything SpaceX has to mitigate that for the launch.
They have to stop that in its, you know, in the place and they
have to fix it wherever it is, if it's a ground system, they
fix it on the ground, if it's in the rocket or the or the
booster, they take it back to the bay and fix it, or they
could possibly fix it there in the pad depending on how major
or minor the the damages to the thing.
So, there's a possibility. We could see this thing happen
really fast. If everything goes well,
everything could go perfectly. Well, the first time around and
nothing bad can happen in, they could just launch this thing in
a few weeks, but I do believe it's going to take a little
while. They see test in the weeks in
the weeks ahead Fightin test prior to the Starships, first
flight test in the weeks ahead. And that's kind of, I don't know
if it's misleading, but I think it's optimistic, I really do
think it's optimistic. Adding full stack wet dress,
rehearsals numerous wet dress rehearsals and hold down
fighting over after 733 Raptor or booster sevens Raptor
engines. So I believe they got to be
moving the ship out of the way ship 25 and I believe when they
do the full 33 engine static fire.
This got it. I think there's got to be a
suppression system but please I hope they proved me wrong and I
think the orbital launch Mount, if it can take, if it can,
withstand the heat from those 33 Raptor engines and it doesn't
melt things around the bottom of the, of the order lodgement.
It's not going to it's probably not going to melt the mount
itself, but the things around it, there was exposed
Electronics. No, there's there's welded pipes
on there which bring, you know, coolant from one place to
another place. But there's also wiring, which
we all know wiring is, you know, it's just wires with wrapped in
plastic or Rubber and that could possibly melt, in ruin the whole
area wherever he gets melted. So sound suppression system.
The water Deluge system could that be in place within the next
few days before the 33 Raptor engines, they could possibly
wire it up. Up hook it up within the next
week or two. If the barge gets over here in
the next two days and if they do a wet dress rehearsal.
So let's let's break it down like this.
If they do a wet dress rehearsal on Monday or Tuesday, the not
Marv was for Monday through Tuesday.
So if they do that if they do the wet dress rehearsal Monday
they take that data. They crunch down the data for a
few days. And during that time, a barge
comes in with all these tanks with a deluge, they could
possibly set up a You'd system, they may even have the pipes
ready to go, because we've seen them do a small Deluge system
underneath the rocket before, and it's basically like a little
sprinkler system, but maybe they just didn't have the water
pressure for a real big W system.
Maybe they didn't have anything hooked up to it.
That could actually, you know, powerful enough to shoot the
water to a big enough. Big enough area like a like a
full 33 Raptor engine. Static fire.
Could take. Hopefully SpaceX steps in and
they do the right thing and they get some sort of sound
suppression system, some sort of water Deluge system in there and
they they protect themselves because they need to protect
this orbital launch Mountain, they need to protect this rocket
at all costs. So I want to say thank you for
listening to this and thank you very much for being part of the
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because I'm really tired. So this is one of those rambly
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