Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
This Friday, 17th of November at 7:00 AMCT, SpaceX will be
launching their Starship Super Heavy rocket from Boca Chica
Starbase, Texas. And there's a little bit more
information that I want to share with you before that launch
happens, just because there just so much stuff going on down at
Starbase right now. And they're prepping the base
systems, they're prepping the rocket, they're prepping the
whole facility, the prepping the people.
This is a, this is a big deal. The Sheriff's Department has to
be down there. There's infrastructure that has
to go on, you know, on notice for the next 24 hours because
we're less than 24 hours away from the launch, which is
incredible, which is absolutely incredible.
But there are a few things that happened today and last night
that I just wanted to like bring up with you guys so you can know
what's going on. So first thing that I want to
talk about, there's a new TFR for Sunday.
So ATFR is basically a temporary flight restriction.
It's basically a temporary don't fly in this area restriction
zone. So this is space TFR on on
Twitter on X Brownsville, SpaceX Starship facility temporary
restriction Sunday, November 19th.
We only had Friday and Saturday before and this is from early in
the morning until in the afternoon.
And here's the official TFR which is basically the same one
As for Friday and Saturday, just they just changed the day to
Sunday on the TFR. So that's one of the newer
things that I didn't see in the last last 24 hours and that
happened last night. So Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
We thought maybe they were going to not do it on Sunday, possibly
because they have a an agreement with the Cameron County
Sheriff's Department and the whole Cameron County, actually,
because the the beach is a public beach and sometimes on
the weekends people want to hang out at the beach.
And SpaceX usually doesn't do things like this on a weekend
unless it's something really big.
If they're going to be doing some testing, it's usually
Thursday, Friday, and then on the weekend they kind of slow
down a little bit. They might do it on a Saturday,
but probably not on a Sunday. But this one is a little bit
different. This is a Sunday TFR and you can
see the flight restriction goes out over the Gulf of Mexico from
Boca Chica Beach there. And of course SpaceX says a
second test flight of fully integrated Starship is set to
launch on Friday, November 17th. A 2 hour launch window opens at
7:00 AM, so 7:00 AMCT until 9:00 AMCT.
So if it's after that, they just have a 2 hour launch window.
That's it. That's it.
And if they can't meet that window, they're just going to
shut it down until the next day, which will be Saturday, and then
after that, it'll be Sunday. So they have three TF Rs in
place. It's ready to go.
They have a flight license, so they're ready to go.
SpaceX posted this on their X account Starship stack for
flight. This is another chance to put
Starship in a true flight environment, maximizing how much
we learn. And that's the key thing here.
This is just the second flight of the Starship.
The first one went, I mean, as good as it could go.
It cleared the tower because if it didn't clear the tower there
would have been some monumental damage to that thing and that
would have taken the months to rebuild.
Rapid, iterative development is essential as we work to build a
fully reusable launch system capable of taking humans and
stuff to Mars basically. But they have some really
beautiful shots here as you can see the the sun rays coming
through as they're stacking the Starship on top of the booster.
And this is not amazing shots and there's people in this next
one, it's really cool, makes it really human, you know, like
hey, this person down here at the bottom right is like, hey
look at that giant rocket and the other people are just like
if you've never been there, it's.
I don't even know how to explain it but it's like this thing is
coming from the heavens in these photos.
It's absolutely a stunning photography and here we go.
We have some Rd. closures for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
We had these closures yesterday and here's the the actual
closure by the county. Cameron County Judge Eddie
Trevino has ordered a temporary closure of access to Boca Chica
Beach which is Hwy. 4. From far away, all the way down
to the beach which is right on the Gulf of Mexico, or to the
closure of the beach, protecting public from Space Flight
activities. Which of course, that's what
Spacex's gonna be doing. They're gonna try to launch this
thing for a orbital ish launch to Hawaii, basically.
So it'll be a vital 90 minute flight from Boca Chica Starbase,
Texas, all the way to off the coast of Kauai in a in a naval
graveyard out there. So you're gonna try to land the
Starship too. They're gonna be doing a soft
landing and it shows this in the in this infographic or I'm
sorry, not a it's going to be doing a belly flopper.
Belly. What is it called?
A belly flop? A belly smacker.
There we go. It's going to be doing a belly
smacker. You can't really see it under my
head, but maybe I can get this. I can't really show it to you,
but it's doing a belly smacker. Oh, there we go, Kind of see
that into the Gulf. So they're probably not going to
recover it. If they do recover it, it's just
going to be like pieces. You know, It's going to pretty
much break up on impact and the FAA and this is yesterday,
November 15th, this is the flight license, the FAA flight
license given license authorization for the second
launch of the Starship Super Heavy.
And here's a rundown of it all. This is the whole license right
here. It's a revised license from the
last time the revision history, April 14th, 2023, original
issuance and then November 15th. These are the new things that
they added or subtracted, removed concurrently from
paragraph two. Replaced Space Exploration
Technologies Corps Corp with Starship Super Heavy in
paragraph 3. Because it's just tech, it's
just minor things that they did. Change paragraph First flight to
Orbital test flight 2 mission additional measures.
SpaceX must comply with the conditions in November 15th.
So we're going to skip over this.
It's it's pretty bureaucratic and almost boring, but basically
saying it's super exciting because they do get this
license. But there are some important
things that the FAA did a statement about FAE has given
license authorization for the second launch of the Starship
Super Heavy vehicle background. The Fe is responsible for
regulating US commercial space transportation Industry license
applies to all phases of the proposed operation.
This includes pre flight preparations and lift off from
Texas. The water landing of the Super
heavy booster which it's going to land, it's going to try to do
a soft touchdown in the Gulf of Mexico, which is absolutely
bonkers at this point because this thing, it blew up the first
time. So if they can get this to land
on the second try in the Gulf of Mexico, this is going to propel
them forward super fast. So and then in a water landing
of the Starship vehicle in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii.
So that's the belly smacker I guess.
And after consultation with the US Fish and Wildlife Services is
the part where everyone was like it's going to take six months,
including myself. I was like, I don't know when
this is going to happen. Nobody really knew.
And a written evaluation of the 2022 programmatic environmental
assessment, the FAA concluded no significant environmental
changes. So basically with the FAA and
the US Fish and Wildlife Service came to the conclusion that
anything from from the water Dillard system that's shooting
up into the air, it's not going to cause anything more than like
just a regular rainfall. So it'd just be like once every
once in a while there's like a random rainstorm.
It doesn't change anything in the in the Gulf there.
It doesn't change anything with the surrounding environment or
the surrounding population of endangered species.
SpaceX applied for and received authorization for one launch.
So there we go. And then there's another part.
SpaceX is targeting November 17th for the 2nd integrated test
flight from Starbrace, Cameron County, Texas. 120 minute test
window opens at 7:00 AM so they do have two hours for this test
window. And this is this is a a
different part that we're normally not used or we're not
used to seeing during these releases.
But residents of Cameron County and those in the nearby area,
they hear a loud noise resulting from the Rockets 33 Raptor
engines firing up on ignition and as the as the vehicle
launches towards space. But what people experience will
depend on weather and other conditions.
So they're basically saying, hey, anybody nearby, you might
want to just hunker down and wear some of your plugs if you
have, If you have issues with your hearing or if you have
sensitive ears or something, there's going to be a loud
noise. And that's what happens when a
rocket launches. All the thrust from those 33
Raptor engines just shoot down into the ground and there is
noise suppression in the in the water deluge system.
So it'll it'll dampen some of the sound, but it is a big
rumble. I mean even for a Falcon Nine
you can feel it miles away, like you can feel it in your chest
miles away. So if you're you know something
that's 9/18/20 like three times plus more engines and more
powerful engines too. Like it's going to be loud and
it's going to shake your soul out of you if you're too close.
So wear your ear protection if you have sensitive ears.
So that was some of the things that I want to show you before
the test flight which will be happening on Friday 7 AMCT and
it'll be going from Starbase, Boca Chica, Texas, the boost
background. Another cool thing that I want
to show you real quick too. Main engine cut off is usually
the term that they use when the first the first stage stops
their engines and this one it's called Miko and this one at 2
minutes and 39 seconds after take off.
Let me see if we can get this bigger for you.
Most engines cut off, so we're not sure how many engines are
going to be cutting off during this time, but it's going to be
exciting no matter what. And that happens right after
like a minute and some odd seconds, a minute and 1/2 after
Max Q, my favorite part of any launch.
So hot staging is another cool thing that's going to be
happening right after that. So 239 most engines cut off from
the booster, and then right after that, hot staging, the
Starship Raptor ignition and the stage separation happens.
And it's going to be such a cool thing.
I cannot wait for hot staging. It's going to be so cool.
Hopefully it doesn't incinerate the booster when it does it.
And I I'm pretty sure SpaceX has figured out the dynamics for
that. But we're gonna see.
It's gonna be exciting. I'm so excited for this.
So join me here tomorrow morning for a a party.
We're gonna have a party for the launch.
And yeah, Friday morning. Let's get at it.
It's got to be so fun. So we have I'm gonna link down
below and I'm gonna put the video the the live stream over
here if I can. I don't know if I can put live
streams like over here in this little video over here, which
I'm going to put over here that way.
But yeah, check out the live stream.
I'll put a link in the description and also first
comment and then maybe over there, we'll see, We'll see what
happens. But anyway, thanks for watching.
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me out a little bit. So thank you so much everybody.
And I will see you for the party for the Starship IFT 2 launch.
All right, bye bye. Take care of yourselves and each
other and I'll see you next time.