Shadowing Practice: SpaceX Delays Flight 13 Further, Flight 14 Testing Starts! | Starship Update - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Starship's 13th flight was so close yet so far.
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Starship's 13th flight was so close yet so far.
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We'll go into what SpaceX is doing to repair Booster 20.
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And if keeping track of Ship 40 and Booster 20 rolling back to the production site wasn't hard enough,
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Booster 21 has rolled out to Massey's to start its testing campaign ahead of Starship's 14th flight.
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Plus over in Florida, the first Starship launch tower at Space Launch Complex 37 is almost at full height as it grows beyond the 7th module.
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We've got all of that and much more coming up in your Starship update.
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We'll get to Flight 13 or more sitting on the Pad 13 in a moment, but first let's take a look at future vehicles currently being built and tested.
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Inside of Star Factory we can see the nose cone assigned to Ship 43.
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While it was pretty easy to assume which flight a vehicle would be assigned to, with ship reuse possibly becoming a reality in the not-too-distant future,
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those predictions are becoming harder and harder.
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Should SpaceX stick to a sequential plan, Ship 43 could fly on Flight 16.
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But even with ship reuse, that does not remove the need for more ships.
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The final step that takes place with a nosecone inside the Star Factory is stacking it onto the payload bay.
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We can see that this step has now taken place for Ship 43.
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And while Ship 43 remains inside the Star Factory, Ship 42 is still progressing through its stacking process.
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One of the final stacking steps for ships is the installation of the methane and liquid oxygen transfer tubes.
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Again, looking inside Star Factory, we can see that the transfer tube installation jig has now received the three methane transfer tubes.
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These three tubes will deliver liquid methane to the three Raptor vacuum engines.
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Before Ship 42 can be lifted onto the jig, it will need its second to last barrel section installed.
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The jig itself still requires the fourth liquid methane transfer tube, which will supply the three center Raptor 3 sea-level engines,
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as well as the liquid oxygen transfer tube that will connect the liquid oxygen header tank to those same three sea-level engines.
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The liquid methane header tank, however, does not need its own transfer tube running to the aft of the ship, as it already has the transfer tube section located inside the methane tank.
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This section routes the propellant into the transfer tube that supplies the three Raptor sea-level engines.
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The transfer tubes are all vacuum jacketed.
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This helps reduce propellant boil off as the vacuum acts as insulation.
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You can experience a similar effect yourself with our tumblers at shop.nasaspaceflight.com, allowing you to keep your cold drinks cold and your warm drinks warm.
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With all these ships in production, Booster 21 did not want to be left out of the action.
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Earlier this week, the booster cryo stand was rolled to the production site to pick up the next booster for its cryogenic test campaign.
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While Ship 40 was still on top of Booster 20, more on that later, Booster 21 rolled out of Mega Bay 1 and rolled towards the Massey's test site.
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With the tank farm at Massey's coming to life, B-21 was filled with liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen.
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Just like when a ship undergoes a cryogenic test, the booster cryogenic test stand has actuators
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that push against the aft section of the booster to simulate the forces from the Raptor engines.
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This validates the aft section of the booster can survive these flight loads before it receives its engines for real
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and heads to the launch site for static fire testing ahead of launch.
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If Flight 13 goes to plan and Booster 20 performs a soft water splashdown in the Gulf, Booster 21 could be the first Block 3 booster to be caught.
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SpaceX could then decide whether Booster 21 stays at Starbase
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or whether they want to transport it over to Florida on Marmac 31
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and use a booster with flight experience for the first launch from the Space Coast.
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While SpaceX is now flying, when they don't have to deal with booster engines refusing to start up, that doesn't mean work on the test tanks has come to an end.
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Booster 18.3 is the booster forward test tank, allowing SpaceX to qualify the integrated hot stage ring and the grid fin mounting points.
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Although it has not undergone cryogenic testing for some time, SpaceX appears to have found a new role for it, as we've now seen teams testing the grid fin motors.
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Testing the strength of these motors will give SpaceX a better understanding of how much authority the grid fins have
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when subjected to the enormous aerodynamic forces they experienced while steering the booster towards its landing site.
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They'll be able to pair this data with the data they gathered on Flight 12, considering the booster never dropped below supersonic speeds on the way back to Earth.
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Make sure to subscribe if you want to see
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if Flight 13 can get a bit further in the list of test objectives.
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Looking just beside B-18.3, we can see that extensive scaffolding has gone up around the booster liquid oxygen landing tank.
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It is currently sitting inside the old nosecomb jail, which was previously used for structural testing of Starship nosecombes.
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SpaceX now appears to be repurposing the facility to carry out a series of structural tests on the landing tank.
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Looking a little more closely, we can already see one of the load directions that will be tested.
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A ring has been installed on top of the landing tank, which will allow SpaceX to attach hydraulic actuators and apply downward loads to the structure.
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Once the landing tank has completed its test campaign, SpaceX will be yet another step closer to optimising the booster's landing burn,
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during which it plans to ignite 13 Raptor 3 engines, just as shown on the Flight 13 mission patch.
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You can pick up that design on a t-shirt, hoodie or if you spend plenty of time out in the sun, even a sun shirt at shop.nasaspaceflight.com.
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Two plugs in one video, we've probably exceeded our quota for the month.
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Over at Pad 1, we saw another major milestone this week, as the prefabricated service structure sections for the launch mount were lifted into their final positions.
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This marks a different construction approach from the one SpaceX used at Pad 2 and LC-39A.
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At those sites, the A-frame structures were fully assembled before being lifted into place alongside the completed flame trench where they remain today.
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At Pad 1, however, SpaceX has taken a different approach.
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Rather than waiting for the flame trench to be finished before assembling the A-frames,
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teams built them in three separate sections and then lifted those sections into place once the flame trench foundations were sufficiently complete.
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It will be interesting to see just how much time this approach saves over the course of construction.
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So how long do you think it will be before Pad 1 is ready to support another Starship launch?
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Let us know in the comments.
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Now, what's up with Starship Flight 13?
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Let's start at the beginning.
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Just under two days before the launch attempt, Booster 20 was rolled out and placed onto the launch mount.
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Less than 24 hours before launch, SpaceX finally rolled Ship 40 out to the launch site after loading the 20 Starlink V3 satellites
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that the vehicle would deploy before they burned up in the atmosphere around 20 minutes later.
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Everything was looking good for a liftoff at 22.45 UTC or 17.45 local time,
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and the countdown had progressed almost flawlessly apart from a brief hold at T-60 seconds.
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Yes, you heard that right, T-60 seconds, not T-40.
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What happened to the T-40 second hold?
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During the countdown, SpaceX announced that the planned hold point had been moved up from T-40 to T-60.
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This change allows them to carry out the final pre-launch checks slightly earlier in the countdown, helping to spread the workload more evenly before liftoff.
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They can still recycle the countdown clock back to T-60 seconds if a hold is called before the deluge system activates.
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However, once the deluge has fired, any hold automatically becomes a scrub as the countdown can no longer be recycled.
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SpaceX says they have around 5-8 minutes of available hold time before a launch attempt has to be called off, although Starship Flight 12 would suggest otherwise,
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as during its first launch attempt they managed to hold and recycle the countdown for nearly 10 minutes.
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Once the hold at 10-60 seconds was cleared on Flight 13, the countdown resumed smoothly.
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The detonation suppression system activated to prevent any unwanted ignitions beneath the pad, followed by the flame trench and top-deck dullage systems.
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Finally, 29 of Booster 20's 33 Raptor engines ignited, according to the on-screen telemetry,
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before the onboard computers triggered an automatic abort, shutting the engines down.
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The last time SpaceX experienced an abort like this was during Falcon 9's Starlink Group 10-2 mission in 2024.
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They've never had to deal with this on a Starship launch before.
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While it's reassuring to know that Starship can safely abort even after engine ignition under launch conditions, ideally we would never have needed to find that out.
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And to be clear, we have actually seen a Starship abort after engine ignition before, just not during a launch attempt.
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Back when Booster 19 was conducting its 10-engine static fire, the test was aborted just over a second after ignition because of an issue with the pad's deluge system.
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That rapid abort caused damage to the engines because they were still in their startup sequence when they were shut down.
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As a result, those 10 engines would not fly on Booster 19.
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However, SpaceX later confirmed that all 10 were successfully repaired and they are now installed on Booster 20.
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That type of abrupt shutdown is known as a hard shutdown.
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This involves immediately closing the valves that feed propellant to the engines.
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This can create pressure spikes and shock waves as fast-moving propellant suddenly slams into closed valves, potentially damaging turbo pumps, injectors and or plumbing.
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This situation appears to have been different.
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Because the abort was triggered by the vehicle rather than a pad issue, the engines that had successfully ignited should have been given time to shut down in a more controlled manner,
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avoiding a hard shutdown while also preventing any damage to the launch pad.
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The actual reason for the abort was that the vehicle exceeded its engine act criteria.
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Starship can tolerate up to three engine failures during startup, but once a fourth engine failed to ignite,
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the launch commit criteria were no longer met and the system automatically aborted the launch.
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Even if there had been no underlying issue with those engines, which we'll come back to in a moment, the attempt would still have ended in a scrub because the abort happened after the deluge system had activated.
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Once the deluge has fired, it takes several minutes before it can be reset and made ready again.
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By that point, SpaceX would already have exceeded its available hold time, meaning there would be no opportunity for another launch attempt, even though the deluge system itself could technically be reset.
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The only way Starship could make another attempt after the deluge has fired would be to completely detank
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and then refuel the vehicle.
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That would only be possible if enough propellant was available and there was still sufficient time left in the launch window.
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In practice, that process would probably take somewhere between two and four hours, which would easily exceed Flight 13's 90-minute launch window.
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So the big question is, why did four engines fail to ignite?
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The honest answer is we simply don't know, so all we can do is make some educated guesses.
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For a start, it seems unlikely that the 10 refurbished engines were responsible, as only one of those engines failed to ignite, Raptor Zero number 78.
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Beyond that, it's difficult to say.
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Any pre-existing faults should have been identified during the 25-second static fire, unless the engine sustained damage during that test or at some point afterwards.
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As a result of the abort, SpaceX has rolled both the ship and booster back to the barn
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so they can inspect the engines and replace some of them, at least according to the boss, Elon Musk, who said that they will replace two raptors to ensure a successful flight.
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Additionally, when the booster was lifted off the mount, our robots captured imagery of the raptors on the booster.
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You may have seen some speculation on social media about parts being missing, but those parts were not actually present when the booster rolled out for this launch attempt.
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It wasn't damaged by this post-ignition abort.
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There's also some paint chipped off around the booster quick disconnects, but this should not affect anything and is completely normal.
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Currently SpaceX appears to be targeting Thursday the 23rd for the next launch attempt, according to their website.
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There's a chance this extra delay is to allow time for additional engine testing on the pad.
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Although it would be a very SpaceX move to skip that step and go straight to flight.
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Over the course of the week, SpaceX also revealed some great new views from Flight 12, a few views of the Flight 13 stack and we also received some interesting Artemis information.
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Starting with the failed boost back burn on On Flight 12
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we received a new view from a camera mounted on one of the booster trines looking down towards the engines.
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Alongside
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that we also got a view from inside the ship engine
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bay showing the sea level engines gimbling out before returning to their normal position.
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When SpaceX was discussing the Starlink V3 satellites on this flight
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which are being flown on the vehicle to test them ahead of becoming operational, we saw the view inside the ship that we typically see during satellite deployment.
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This view showcased the 20 V3 Starlink satellites inside Ship 40.
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When it comes to Artemis 3, SpaceX will launch a modified Starlink V3 with a docking port on the tip of the nose cone, allowing NASA's Orion spacecraft to dock with the vehicle.
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After docking, they will carry out manoeuvrability tests of both vehicles while they are connected.
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They also announced that NASA will be installing two SpaceX Mini lasers onto the spacecraft to connect it to the Starlink network,
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with the goal of enabling live 4K video from space.
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Artemis 2 already had impressive views, and now it seems Artemis 3 is only going to improve on that.
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Overall, it was quite an unlucky first launch attempt for Flight 13, but who knows what could have happened if they had launched despite the engine issues.
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After all, it is better to be on the ground wishing you were
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in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground.
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And while we're waiting for Starship's next flight from Starbase, what about SpaceX's future operational launch sites over in Florida?
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The first Starship missions from the Space Coast will fly from historic Launch Complex 39A, where SpaceX teams have recently been carrying out a range of tests,
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from chopstick movement testing to tank farm testing, including the dilute system and hold down clamp testing on the launch mount.
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Additionally, more storage tanks for the tank farm have been delivered
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and will be installed into the tank farm at a later date.
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The pad here is probably almost ready to support a Starship launch.
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The only thing it is really waiting on is a vehicle, and with SpaceX once again confirming that they hope to launch from LC-39A later this year,
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it should not be too long before we finally see a vehicle barged from Starbase to the Cape.
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The second Starship pad in Florida is Space Launch Complex 37A.
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This will be the first of two launch pads and towers at Slick 37.
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Recently, construction teams lifted the seventh of nine tower modules and placed it onto the tower using the LR-13000 crane.
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This was then shortly followed by its penultimate eighth module.
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As SpaceX has said, this tower has been constructed remarkably quickly
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and it will not be long until it reaches its full height.
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For the tower to reach its full height though, it needs all of its different sections.
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This isn't just the nine tower modules, but also the base and roof.
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Alongside the construction of the fourth Starship Tower, we also spotted what appears to be launch mount parts being transported past the VAB towards Roberts Road.
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These are likely for the pad at 37, which means SpaceX will be beginning fabrication work for this launch site.
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As we saw at pad 2 and 39A, the launch mounts are first constructed off-site before being moved to the launch site for installation onto the four legs
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that support them.
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Because of this, we probably won't see the base of the pad at Compex 37 start taking shape until the flame trench has been constructed, as the trench structure is what holds up the mount.
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We're potentially just hours away from the next Starship launch, so make sure to tune into our live coverage starting at L-9 hours with our stakeout stream
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and our full-on launch broadcast starting at L-3 hours.
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If you're from the future though and it's already launched, then I'm surprised you made it this far into the video.
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I've been Ryan Caton for NSF, thanks for watching and goodbye.
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Who Is This Video For?
This video is perfect for intermediate to advanced English learners aiming to boost their technical vocabulary and fluency in conversational science topics. It’s ideal for those preparing for IELTS speaking practice or looking to refine their ability to follow complex, fast-paced dialogue. If you want to practice english speaking practice with real-world content—like discussing engineering processes or space technology—this video offers rich, detailed material to work with.
Words & Idioms Worth Stealing
- "So close yet so far": Describes something almost achieved but not quite. Example: "My project was so close yet so far from completion."
- "Boil off": The process of a liquid turning into gas due to heat. Example: "The ice melted quickly, with much of it boiling off into steam."
- "Left out of the action": Excluded from an activity. Example: "I felt left out of the action when my friends planned a trip without me."
- "Come to life": To become active or operational. Example: "The city comes to life at night with lights and music."
How to Get the Accent Right
The speaker uses a clear, conversational tone with emphasis on technical terms. Focus on stressing key nouns like "booster," "cryogenic," and "Raptor engines" to match the natural flow. Practice the shadowing technique by pausing the video and repeating phrases like "vacuum jacketed" or "propellant boil off"—pay attention to the short, sharp "o" in "boil" and the soft "j" in "jacketed." For rhythm, mimic the speaker’s pacing when explaining complex processes (e.g., "This section routes the propellant into the transfer tube..."). Use a shadowing app to record yourself and compare it to the video, or visit a shadowing site for structured practice. This will help you master the clarity and confidence needed for technical discussions, whether in IELTS speaking practice or everyday conversations.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.