Original subtitles

Kind thanks go to Surfshark VPN for sponsoring todays episode!

SpaceX’s Starship SN15 did it.

It’s the first Starship to launch out of Boca Chica Texas and actually survive.

Let’s analyze the flight and take a look at what kind of implications this incredible milestone has for SpaceX and our future!

My name is Felix, and I am your host for today’s episode of What about it!?

And as always, there’s been a lot going on in the space industry lately, so let ’s dive right in!

Starship Updates

SpaceX is on track again and the Starship enthusiast community has a few things to celebrate.

I am of course talking about the recent Starship number 15 launch.

If you don’t exactly know, what all this means for SpaceX and maybe even the future of humankind,

stay with me and I’ll shed some light on this week’s Starship events.

This is it. The moment many have been waiting for again for a while now.

May 5th at around 5:20 pm local time.

SpaceX Starbase, south Texas. United States.

Planet Earth. Starship number 15, the latest of a steadily growing line of Starship prototypes is ready for its big moment.

Dubbed Scrubby by the WAI family because its launch date got pushed several times.

It was or better still is a huge improvement compared to the last generation of SpaceX Starships.

Where Serial Numbers 8 through 11 were the third generation of prototypes with many problems still to solve,

SN15 already is part of the next and fourth generation.

In my Episode SN10 versus SN15 I did a deep dive into what many of the differences are and if you haven’t seen it yet,

I’d recommend watching it after today’s episode to get even more information about what makes this flight so special.

As you can see in SpaceX’s live feed directly from the pad,

the weather wasn’t the best and I honestly didn’t expect SpaceX to even light the engines that day but they did.

Kage,

my co host for the evening and I could barely stand the tension and the community managed to create the longest hype train in Spaceflight history.

All thanks to SpaceX and a spaceflight project that couldn’t be crazier in its scope.

Then history unfolded. Narrated by John Insprucker, an icon amongst the spaceflight community,

Starship number 15 soared towards a very low cloud ceiling in Boca Chica.

All three Raptor engines ignited without any visual problem.

Then at around one minute and 35 seconds the live camera feed started to stutter heavily but even that didn’t really harm the experience.

Still narrated by Insprucker and still cheered by the spaceflight community gathered around the world in excitement, SN15 continued its ascent.

At around 4 minutes into flight, SN15 performed the famous Adama-maneuver and transitioned into free fall.

We’ve seen this a few times, but it doesn’t really get old.

As seen here with Starship number 10, Starships do this to practice their way of landing safely back on Earth.

Unlike a Falcon 9 booster for example,

a Starship sheds most of its speed before landing by skydiving through the atmosphere and by increasing its drag coefficient and its surface are

as much as it can. This saves large amounts of fuel for the final landing burn,

as the terminal velocity can be lowered to around 90 meters per second this way.

Huge thanks go out to the SpaceX staff responsible for camera placement on Starship number 15.

Who ever had the idea of placing one of the action cams on one of the forward flaps deserves an Oscar for best camera.

This way we were able to take a ride on a Starship flap and get a great idea of how much these flaps have to move to balance out the freefall portion of the descent phase.

At around 5 minutes into the flight Starship number 15 got ready to transition from horizontal to vertical again,

do the swing maneuver and start the final landing burn.

John Insprucker explained it of course and while doing so he said that Starship will flip with three engines and then shut down one engine and

possibly two and then do the landing burn.

On Starship number 10 the landing burn was done with one engine after shutting down two and down selecting to make sure that one engine has a

good burn. It had a good burn, but it also ingested helium from the header tanks while doing the landing burn,

which lowered the thrust output and caused a very hard landing,

ultimately resulting in the loss of the vehicle a few minutes after the landing.

Don’t get me wrong. These RUD’s are spectacular and Cosmic Perspective did an absolutely awesome job here filming the event,

but even though we might like these explosions, SpaceX doesn’t.

It keeps them from the most important price at the end.

A Starship they can actually analyze after the flight.

SN15 enabled SpaceX to do exactly that.

Starship SN15 performed the flip with two engines and kept them running throughout the landing burn,

which ultimately provided enough thrust for SN15 to softly touch down.

On LabPadre’s awesome camera feed you can see, how gentle the Starship came down.

Not completely in the middle of the pad and with a small fire developing under the engine skirt right after touch down,

but none the less with deployed legs, standing and soft.

It survived.

Right at the landing, SpaceX showed a camera from inside the engine skirt and a thermal insulation blanket can be seen dangling around and burning.

This might have been the cause for the fire inside the engine bay.

The biggest damage the fire caused can be seen in a wide-angle drone shot from just after the landing.

Loud popping noises can be heard and some explosions under the skirt can be seen.

Those likely are copv’s inside the engine bay that exploded after the fire heated them up enough.

This will likely have damaged the Raptor engines beyond repair.

This isn’t a big thing though.

SpaceX for the first time in the test program now is in possession of a flown Starship prototype that did not experience a complete RUD.

I can already see a grinning horde of engineers cannibalizing poor SN15, because this is the holy grail for them.

They can now inspect a flown Starship for the first time.

Inspect welds, material fatigue, heat tiles, the tank structure and so on.

SN15 didn’t only prove, that a block 4 Starship can land, it also gave SpaceX the opportunity to study a Starship up close after a flight.

My verdict for this flight is that it is the proof SpaceX needed to now enter the next stretch of development.

Not only did SN15 give proof that a Starship can manage to land without an explosion but it also is a huge motivational boost for all the engineers

and workers involved in building it.

Knowing that progress is being made can be an invigorating feeling.

Thank you SpaceX crew. You are absolutely amazing!

Next up let’s take a look at what comes after SN15.

What can we expect next? What are they up to now?

Let’s find out!

What do you think about today’s episode so far?

Liked it? Give it a thumbs up.

Didn’t like it? Tell us in the comments, what we can do better!

Subscribe to the channel or even become a member by hitting the join button under the video and get awesome perks like access to our Discord and

a chance to talk to me and the team or completely ad free episode releases for supporters!

Or get some fresh Waiwear in our merch store!

Designs from the community including Neopork, Nick Henning, Brendan and me!

Ready to make you look awesome for the next launch!

Thank you for all your support!

You Rock!

Now that SN15 is history SpaceX will clean the landing pad, roll out the next prototype and proceed towards the next goal in line.

An orbital Starship flight.

To validate the results of the SN15 test flight, SpaceX will as always get the next prototype out to the Starbase Launch site as quick as possible.

SN16, even more advanced and even more capable of continuing the success story,

is already stacked and waiting inside the high bay at the construction site.

Finishing work is being done and we can expect a rollout to the pad rather soon.

Boca Charts has finished the latest diagram for the WAI family, including SN15’s launch from Wednesday.

It occurred on day 27 after it arrived at the launch site and that puts it 5 days later than SN11 which had its spectacular explosion in dense

fog above the suborbital fuel farm.

It still shows though, that with each succeeding Starship, the tendency down towards less waiting time at the pad is clear.

SN9 took SpaceX 15 days longer to prepare for a flight.

SN10 took 6 days longer. So,

if SN16 takes roughly the same amount of time that SN15 needed and we’re not too far away from a rollout to the pad anymore,

we might actually get two starship flights this month.

After that come SN17 and some much-needed Super Heavy booster testing.

A lot of focus right now is on the orbital launch site, which shows that SpaceX is very keen on achieving that next large milestone,

an orbital Starship flight, rather soon.

The integration, launch and landing support tower is taking shape fast.

Here’s an aerial picture taken by Mauricio from RGV Aerial Photography.

It shows the sanchez site, where SpaceX is building An oxygen and methane production plant right now.

Those large black jigs on the ground though are relatively new and SpaceX is using them to assemble segments of the support tower for the orbital launch site.

Blender 3D Creation Eccentric has made a very nice animation for #TeamSpace to illustrate the construction.

Six segments should be enough to get the tower to its full height.

All of them separately made at the Sanchez site, transported to the launch site and stacked on top of each other with the large new Liebherr crane.

As always, it’s a fast and easy approach.

Looking closer at the construction there are hundreds of attachment points on the horizontal beams so it’s very likely that SpaceX will cover

the sides and turn the tower into a rather solid structure.

Also built at the Sanchez site we finally know, what SpaceX will use the large flat domes for.

They’re being turned into jackets for the Ground support equipment tanks at the launch site.

Some of these large new tanks are meant to hold cryogenic fuel.

Without any sort of insulation they would develop a large ice crust on the outside and be very energy inefficient.

To prevent boil off from happening, they’ll need some sort of insulation.

And that’s exactly what SpaceX is building at the Sanchez site.

Nice jackets for the tanks to stay warm..

erm… cold. The extra layer between tank and jacket works like a thermos.

Nice and cold on the inside and ambient temperature on the outside.

This prevents boil off and safes huge amounts of energy SpaceX would otherwise have to invest to constantly cool the fuel down again.

The orbital launch site construction no doubt is the largest infrastructure construction project the SpaceX South Texas Starbase has seen to date.

It’s right now changing the whole site from suborbital tests successfully being conducted right next to it to a spaceport capable of sending Starships

on first orbital test flight and later on regular flights even to Moon and Mars.

On my SN15 live stream together with my co-host Kage I was asked to explain why exactly all this is history in the making.

I would like to ask you the same.

What do you think makes all this important?

What do you think will the implications be?

How will all this change our future?

Write it down in the comments!

I am eager to hear your thoughts!

Now let’s have a look at today’s sponsor and don’t click away just yet.

The deal is actually pretty sweet.

Whether it’s data & identity theft, traceability, intrusive advertising or geo blocking.

Surfshark VPN encrypts your data and enables you to change your virtual location.

Have you ever been greeted with a message, that this site or video is not available in your country?

Streaming services like Netflix or Disney+ for example have vastly different libraries in different countries!

Surfshark makes you outsmart them easily by removing the so-called geo block from your account.

Just activate your VPN, change your virtual location, refresh the page and you’re good to go for countless more Netflix evenings!

Use my code to get 83% off plus 3 extra months for free and at the same time support What about it!?

Surfshark offers a 30-day money-back guarantee so there’s no risk.

Surf with your own set of rules.

Link is in the description.

Today’s supporter shout out goes to Nhunor Gaming, Lorenzo Patricio Ramos, Dan Street, Jaco Welsh, Fairman Bockhorst, Mia Pellikka, Florian,

Erik Wagner, Brian Roos, Douglas Young, Reto Tosoni, Darnell, Red, Keith Vauquelin, Robert Gowitt, Dustin Nelson, Mike Santangelo, Remo,

Stephen Lodwick, Techno Dino, Todd M Brewer, Chris Tuttle, Tim and so many others!

You rock so much!!! Without you and all the other supporters What about it would not be possible.

Thank you for your support, enjoy today’s ad-free release and remember to join us on the WAI Discord server!

I am looking forward to thanking you in person!

Today’s team shout out goes to the crazy bunch of people again who make our live streams possible!

The mods! Thank you so much for enduring all those shrug, hype and Kage trains!

Without you there would be any streams!

It’s an honor and a pleasure working with you!

Have a great weekend and I’ll see you on the next launch!