SpaceX Reveals NEW Prototype! Starship Flight 13 Is Almost Here!

[00:00] We're 18 days past Flight 12, and SpaceX is already deep into preparing for the next one. Booster 20 just completed its first prior test. Booster 21 is backing up inside Mega Bay 1.

[00:13] Ship 40 has engines going in. And the launch pad still looks like it has never seen a rocket. The question now isn't whether Flight 13 is coming. The question is how soon, and it might come sooner than you think.

[00:26] My name is Felix, welcome to What About It, let's dive right in. Starship updates. Before we get into it, a quick personal note. The move went well. Well, reasonably well.

[00:41] The new space is great, and I am genuinely glad to be back doing this. I want to say thank you to everyone who waited patiently through the one and a half weeks without a Y update. The support from this community is the reason this channel works the way it does, and I do not take it for granted.

[00:56] thank you. Now with that said, let's catch up on what SpaceX has been doing while my furniture was on a truck. Let's start at the launch site, because the picture there is genuinely impressive.

[01:08] Scaffolding has returned to the orbital launch launch. Crews are back at work, but nothing major appears to be happening with the Olam itself. The Boots of Quick Disconnect ran a slow retraction test this week to verify they still function after the flight beyond that basic inspection.

[01:23] Now, think about what that means. We just launched the most powerful rocket ever built of this pad less than three weeks ago, and the OLM is in good enough shape that the post-flight work is essentially just checking everything is still working.

[01:38] The contrast with the old pad 1 OLM, where every flight left visible damage and significant refurbishment work, is enormous. SpaceX learned a lot during the Block 1 and Block 2 era, and pad 2 is the result.

[01:51] The tower side tells a similar story. Crews were inspecting the ship quick disconnect arm. Compared to the two booster quick disconnects, the SQD's only real protection during liftoff is swinging away from the rocket.

[02:05] Whee! So you would expect it to take heat. But beyond inspections, we have not seen any actual repair work performed on the arm. That tells you it came through the launch in a good shape.

[02:17] The chopsticks came down this week as well, same inspection process. And here's something specific worth noting. Both the left and right landing rails have been removed from the sticks. There are two possible reasons for this. One, SpaceX saw some damage on the landing rails.

[02:33] Two, and I think this is more likely, SpaceX is going to install an improved version for future flights. Cyclops didn't have a catch attempt, so the rails were not even used. Removing them now suggests an upgrade, not a repair.

[02:47] We'll see what goes back on when SpaceX is ready to install the next version. The overall picture, more than anything else, is how pristine this pad still looks. The flame diverter and the OLM are clean, and the tower is barely discolored.

[03:01] It honestly looks like there has never been a launch on it. And that is the result of building the pad correctly the first time with all the lessons from pad 1 baked in. So, here's one bit of housekeeping.

[03:13] The FAA has officially opened a mishap investigation for Flight 12. Ship 39 did its job and landed softly in the Indian Ocean, no problem there. Booster 19 is the focus.

[03:25] The anomaly during boostback, the failed landing burn, and the hard splashdown in the Gulf all need to be investigated. That's standard procedure, and seeing the FAA open the investigation was not a surprise at all.

[03:37] Either way, SpaceX has to look at the booster data and apply changes to Booster 20 for the upcoming flight. The investigation itself is unlikely to hold up Flight 13, because SpaceX will already be making those changes regardless of FAA findings.

[03:53] The two processes can run in parallel. On June 2nd, SpaceX ran chopstick tests on Pad 2. One of the two chopsticks moved in and out several times, likely a system verification for Flight 13.

[04:05] That's the kind of activity you do when the pad is essentially ready, and you are validating individual subsystems. For a pad that test launched a Starship 18 days ago, that is a remarkably advanced state of readiness.

[04:20] Now the big news of the week. On June 3rd, SpaceX posted a road closure for June 4th, noon to 4pm production to Massey. And exactly as expected, booster 20 rolled from Mega Bay 1 to Massey.

[04:35] And then, on June 6th, they completed its inaugural cryo-proof test. And the visuals are spectacular. The booster was completely thrusted from top to bottom. An impressive display of how well the vehicle handled the cryogenic conditions.

[04:49] No visible problems. Everything appears to have gone very well. The next steps are straightforward. Roll booster 20 back to the production site, install the engines, then roll it to pad 2 for the static fire campaign.

[05:01] The pipeline is moving quickly. When covering space exploration, I often think about the people behind these programs and missions. Engineers running on three hours of sleep before a launch. Mission controllers feeling the weight of a billion-dollar spacecraft.

[05:16] An astronaut that's spent months away from their families. And it builds up something that isn't talked about enough. Mental load. The pressure of the job you love. The struggle of managing your life when things get heavy.

[05:28] Up in there and I know a lot of you have too I have learned the hard way how much of a difference it makes to have somebody to talk to This is why I want to tell you about today sponsor BetterHelp because therapy is not just for crisis moments

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[06:07] While Booster 20 was quietly testing at Massey's, work on the next booster was already underway. In the night of June 6th into June 7th, Booster 21's aft and engine section was moved into Mega Bay 1 following the LOX landing tank installation on June 4th.

[06:24] Next up are the three remaining sections that make up the methane tank, plus the integrated hot-stage structure on top. When all of that is in place, Booster 21 will become the fourth fully stacked version 3 super heavy booster.

[06:37] Booster 18, we don't talk about Booster 18. Booster 19 flew Flight 12. Booster 20 is going through its test campaign right now. Booster 21 is next in the queue. It almost looks like an active production line now.

[06:50] Boosters flowing through each one a few weeks behind the last. Chip 40 has been moving through its own pipeline. Sacking completed March 2nd, rolled out to Matthews on May 2nd for cryotesting,

[07:02] cleared structural and cryogenic verification on May 3rd and 4th, rolled back to Megabay 2 on May 6th. So far, so good. And now, on June 5th and 6th, three sea-level Raptor 3 engines and three vacuum-raptor 3 engines

[07:17] were moved into Megabay 2 for installation on ship 40. Once engines are in, ship 40 has back to Matthews for static fire testing. That is the last major tech point before flight readiness.

[07:29] And alongside ship 40, ship 41 has been making progress too. Full effect moves to the middle stand inside Megabay 2 for further processing. The right aft flap has already been installed, left aft flap is next.

[07:42] Activity isn't confined to the city limits of Starbase either. You'll find the latest SpaceX's brand new Starship transport barge has arrived at the port of Brownsville, and Jordan and Amy were up to take pictures.

[07:54] No actual vehicle is ready to transport to the Cape yet, but preparing everything in advance makes the eventual arrival faster. And there's one detail that is really good to see. CUPVs, or composite over-wrapped pressure vessels, have been spotted going to Matthews again after a long hiatus.

[08:11] The SIP-36 explosion was caused by a CU-PV failure, so the fact that SpaceX is back to testing them at Massey's is a healthy sign. Finally, Booster 18.3 ran another test this week.

[08:24] Now that Booster 19 has actually flown, SpaceX can use 18.3 to test changes being made to the forward section based on real flight data. Expect more 18.3 testing in the coming weeks, that is exactly what test articles are for.

[08:39] These aerial images are essential for my reporting. If you're down at Starbase, make sure to pay our official partner, SBI Helicopters, a visit and book a flight. The same views our photographers get, it is unforgettable and worth every penny.

[08:54] Click the card or the link in the description. Health why in return, check it out today. So, with all of that, where does Flight 13 land? Plum intended. We waited 221 days between Flight 11 and 12.

[09:07] That gap was the version 3 redesigned. The next gap is going to be a lot shorter. Booster 20 just cleared Kyle. Engines are next, then static fire, then stacking. Ship 40 is having its engines installed right now and is heading for its own static fire campaign at Massey's.

[09:25] The pad is essentially ready. The mishap investigation runs in parallel with the work, not against it. My realistic estimate is somewhere in the next few weeks. Yeah, I know that sounds crazy, possibly still in June, but more likely early to mid-July, which raises an interesting possibility.

[09:43] How about a 250th birthday gift to the United States? Flight 13, close to the 4th of July weekend, would be quite the celebration. I am not predicting it, but the timing is in the realm of possibility.

[09:56] Either way, the pace is picking up. Flight 13 is close. When does Flight 13 actually launch? June? Early July? Mid July? Or later? And, bonus question, do you think Space Ace would seriously target the 4th of July weekend?

[10:11] Drop your predictions below in the comments, I'll be reading every single one. Whew! You've reached the middle of the video, you made it! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for watching and liking the video. If you're among the 40% who haven't subscribed yet, and there was at least one video you learned something new from,

[10:28] it would mean the world to me if you did. It is free, and it genuinely helps more people find my channel to spread the word about spaceflight. Want to make my world even easier? There is only one place you'd rather be, the Y Members Club, on Patreon and right here on YouTube.

[10:42] Click the card or the join button right here under the video. You are the reason we keep doing this. Thank you so much, you rock! Now, here comes the Catastrophe Report. This all happened while I was sifting through boxes.

[10:55] On May 28th, Blue Origin was preparing for a routine hot fire of a New Glenn booster designated for NG-4. The next New Glenn mission its task was to launch a group of Amazon LEO satellites For New Glenn Zwargen performs these important tests directly on the dedicated launch pad at Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36

[11:16] And during preparation, everything looked routine. But then, the booster exploded in a big way. A massive fireball lit up the night sky over the space coast. When the smoke had cleared in the first morning light, the scope of this accident became clear.

[11:33] The booster named No, It is Necessary was gone, completely destroyed. And the question is whether this was really necessary. The transporter erector, the big machine that hauls the rocket out and stands it upright, gone.

[11:47] The giant lightning protection tower felled like an old tree. The launch tower took heavy damage and everything else on site looked charred black. By some accounts, it was the most violent rocket explosion since the Soviet N1 moon rocket blew up back in 1969.

[12:04] But that is not confirmed, so maybe we best file it under dramatic claim. The question now is, what really happened? The good news first. No human was hurt, and after an initial examination, it also became clear that the stuff that would take years to replace was mostly spared.

[12:20] The propellant farm, the oxygen, hydrogen, and methane tanks, as well as the water tower. By now, Blue Origin also stated that the damaged tower can be repaired rather than rebuilt from scratch.

[12:32] Blue's luck evidently did not stop here either. Another new Glenn booster and three upper stages were sitting in a nearby building. All of this hardware was spared. It could have been so much worse.

[12:44] But there is also bad news. What caused the explosion is still unknown. It looks like it started at the base of the rocket as the 7BE4 engines lit up. But this is speculation, and the cause will have to be determined by the investigators.

[12:59] And then there is one really obvious problem. LC-36 is Blue Origin's only launchpad for New Glenn. So, until it's rebuilt, New Glenn is grounded. Full stop. This ripples all the way to the moon.

[13:12] Literally. New Glenn is the rocket that's supposed to transport Blue Origin's Blue Moon Luna lander for NASA's Artemis program. The company had realistic plans to launch the first uncrewed Blue Moon Mark I lander in the fall of this year.

[13:26] This timeline is now basically off the table. In a twist you couldn't write if you tried, NASA had signed fresh launch contracts with Blue Origin just two days before the explosion. NASA Administrator Jared Eisekman already visited LC-36 to have a look at the damage,

[13:42] and to offer Blue Origin all the help NASA can give to get New Glenn back on the pad fast. One of the items that would have taken a lot of time and effort to build the transporter erector will not make a comeback.

[13:56] CEO Dave Limp explained on X that Blue Origin had already been working for some time on eliminating this piece of equipment in favor of a vertical integration procedure. Much like what SpaceX does with Starship, it stays upright.

[14:10] So when can they fly again? CEO Dave Limp says before the end of 2026. That's the official line, and I'll be straight with you, rebuilding a launch pad and closing out an explosion investigation in a few months is ambitious.

[14:24] Possible? Sure, but ambitious. I keep my fingers crossed for Blue Origin, gratitude for Ositer, you can do this. And we're not done with the catastrophe report yet. While Blue Origin's incident involved an excessive amount of fire, the ISS crew was confronted with a concerning lack of air.

[14:43] There is no hiding it anymore. The International Space Station is noticeably aging. And while leaks have been a recurring problem, the latest incident was serious enough for NASA to call the astronauts to save Stevens.

[14:55] On Friday morning at 9.04 a.m. use in time, Mission Control radios the space station. Their request was for five of the seven astronauts currently on the ISS to don their spacesuits and retreat to the Dock's Crew Dragon.

[15:09] This was not an illicuation. Nobody left the station. The safe haven procedure is the preparation for a quick evacuation if needed. You can imagine it as boarding a lifeboat on a ship.

[15:21] Everyone is prepared to drop away quickly, but can return to normal operation as soon as the situation is cleared. The astronauts that did shelter in the Crew Dragon were the four SpaceX Crew-12 members.

[15:34] Jessica Meyer and Jack Hathaway from NASA, ESA, Sophie Adonaut, and Andrei Fadiev from Roscosmos. They were joined by NASA's Chris Williams, who came to the ISS aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-28.

[15:47] But there were two more crew members who didn't get to go into the capsule. The Russian cosmonauts Sergei Kutrychkov and Sergei Mikhail stayed aboard to attempt to repair a leak.

[16:00] Interestingly, NASA's call for the astronauts to retreat to the capsule was not due to a leak in the station, but to the chosen method for the repair attempt. Before we get to talk about the fix, what actually was the problem?

[16:13] A lot of headlines make it sound very scary right now, so let's get the real info, shall we? The leak is in a part of the station called the PRK. This component is a vestibule, a short transfer tunnel.

[16:26] This little tunnel is where progress fighters dock to deliver cargo to the ISS. It connects the rear docking port to the Russian service module, Svesta. Svesta and its PRK are quite old This module has been the structural backbone of the Russian ISS segment since the year 2000 Yeah trouble started in September 2019 when ground teams noticed the station was losing air a touch faster than it should

[16:53] And this air loss was ultimately traced to the PRK. At first, the problem was tiny. We're talking around 90 grams of air a day, the kind of number you note in a logbook and don't lose sleepover. Unfortunately, it didn't stay like this.

[17:07] The leak slowly grew. It got worse. By February 2024, it had increased to 1,088 grams per day, peaking in April 2024 at 1,678 grams.

[17:20] These numbers came from NASA's Office of Inspector General. That is the watchdog office that audits NASA. When it writes a report about your air leak, you've got a real problem. In the same report, the Office of Inspector General noted investigators were tracking four actual cracks and around 60 areas of concern.

[17:40] 60. More bad news can be found on NASA's internal risk matrix. That is a grid that scores how likely a problem is against how bad it would be if it happened. The PRK leak maxed out on both axes.

[17:54] 5 out of 5, top of the chart. The single highest safety risk on the entire station ever. The big question here seems obvious. If NASA is aware of the problem, why don't they fix it? This situation is more complicated than it might seem.

[18:08] On the one hand, nobody fully agrees on what's causing it. On the other hand, the cracks are very hard to get to. The Russian engineers lean toward metal fatigue as an explanation. Over the years, the material degrades.

[18:21] This is caused by a mix of tiny vibrations and the station flexing and trembling through thousands of orbits and dozens of docking maneuvers. It results in micro fractures permanently weakening the metal.

[18:33] A good way to try this out for yourself is to take a paperclip and bend it back and forth. Keepy loopy itsy bitsy tiny little paperclib. Sooner or later the paperclip will snap.

[18:45] Up on the ISS, the same principle is at work and has been over decades. From NASA's point of view, the issue is messier than that. The agency says it's a stack of causes piling up on top of each other.

[18:58] Mechanical stress is just one factor, and is made worse by the pressure cycling every time the tunnel is used. Vanessa also blames the module's metal quality and hints at residual stress baked into the welds during construction.

[19:12] What you do, Russia? No matter the cause, fixing cracks on the PRK is brutally difficult. Why? Because the cracks are tiny. No, even smaller. Literally, microscopic. Often, they are not even visible to the naked eye.

[19:26] Identifying a leaked position is only the start of your troubles. The next obstacle is to get to it. The cracks are buried behind a tangle of brackets, pipes and equipment.

[19:38] To even reach one, you have to start cutting away the hardware in front of it. And this is where we come back to Friday's call from Mission Control. The retreat to save Haven was triggered because of just that problem.

[19:51] The bad access situation is what makes such a repair attempt so dangerous. You simply can fix what you can't reach. But reaching it literally requires cutting into the very structure you're afraid might fail.

[20:04] There's a very real danger of decompression and serious structural damage. NASA was not happy with Los Cosmos' repair plan. The agency stated that the procedure could quickly turn a slow leak into a fast one.

[20:18] And this made NASA do the right thing. X to protect the crew. Make sure everybody is safe aboard the Crew Dragon before any repair work starts aboard the ISS. About two hours later, at around 10.57am, it was all over.

[20:32] But Cosmos agreed to pause the cutting and take more measurements first. Inspect the area, check the sealants they'd already applied, gather data before going at it with a blade. Yeah. NASA said it strongly supported that call, the crew climbed back out, and the day went back to normal.

[20:50] One of the two newly found leaks has since been plugged with a Russian sealant called Germato. The second one is still open while engineers study it. At the moment, the pressure is stable.

[21:02] The Progress 95 transport capsule is still parked at that back port. And the hatch to it is shut the way it almost always is these days. This kind of leak management has become standard.

[21:14] The tunnel is only opened when the crew needs to use the back port. As an additional measure, the American crew is deliberately kept on the U.S. side of the station near their own escape vehicle.

[21:26] Whenever the tunnel is open, a U.S. segmentage is closed as a safety measure. The focus is always to keep the ISS crew as safe as possible, and this workaround is a good step, but it's no permanent fix.

[21:39] With the ISS nearing the end of its life cycle, the odds of a full repair look poor. And that's it for today. Smash that like button, subscribe for more. this is what fuels the algorithm and this is how you can help us for free. Check out our epic charts in your favorite space nerd store,

[21:53] our all-time favorite Raptor engine design, and countless others are there for you to explore. Click the card or the US or worldwide link in the description. And if you want to know how SpaceX is planning to build a self-stained moon base in the next 10 years,

[22:07] watch this video next to continue your journey. Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you again in the next episode. Woo!