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 like that. Good prices, fast shipping and ships worldwide. So go check that out. 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 Space News pod and on Facebook too. Space News pod, I don't really use Facebook as much but it's there. So and we also have Twitch at 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. There is a goodbye thank you thing right here. Join the flight crew right over there. You can join it. You can subscribe to the show. Give us a thumbs up, let us know what you're thinking, and then become part of the flight crew. And that's about it. All right. Bye. Bye everybody.