For a short term solution they could fire off the staging ring right before or during the landing burn with a drogue followed by a parachute and try to recover it. That's a lot of stainless steel. I could build a yacht with that!
Why do we assume that 1. the surface filters are straight and horizontally flat and not conical like in funnels, and 2. you can cut flat filter surfaces so that the gaps on the outer walls are minimal.
There must be a quote we haven't heard, "The best part is as many parts as possible" - Elon Musk. Or is the work ethos called, "work hard not smart?" There was never the slightest need to dump garbage gas in the LOX tank in the first place.
I wonder when you are up to 12 tons of contamination plus the steel if until you have v3 engine and gaseous oxygen it would not be better to revert to Helium pressurisation for the oxygen tank. Just wondering what the weight penalty would be ?
lol it would be awesome to be able to make a series on Netlix. I think the interest level in space flight would have to be 10x greater than what it is currently in order for something like that to happen
The one thing that is unfortunate about using a sponsor for these episodes is that when I need to pin an important comment….i can not do that lol Anyway, to address the gravitational settling that I mentioned in the episode: I’m aware that this is an incorrect assumption. Instead the particles would likely shift to one side of the tank during the initial flip maneuver. Once it’s gathered to one side, the roll would then assist with throwing particles over the edge of the screen. Since I can’t pin this comment…please give it a thumbs up if you see it to help move it up towards the top of the list 😂.
Yeah it's in freefall so gravity can't move anything inside. Until it enters the atmosphere, then drag is starting to pull backwards and this might be directional.
@@JorisRobijn came to confirm why thoughts as well. I'm no rocket scientist or anything but I thought it was a weird assumption that gravity was pulling the ice down when the rocket would, effectively, be in free fall in that direction/vector.
Those extra screens are a temporary engineering aberration. Until, the engine can give pure gaseous oxygen. That is the only long term solution. Great job as always Zack.
However, keep in mind that hot pre burner gas is hotter than a heat exchanger. They can save tons of weight in just hotter and less dense gas because of how large the volume is. They also had issues with pressurization before Raptor 2, pressure collapse was an issue multiple times. Hotter gas also helps solve this. You're fighting the gas condensing into a liquid, and the propellant is sub chilled on top of that increasing the issue. @@johnathanclayton2887
@@johnathanclayton2887 not lighter, perhaps, but much simpler. It could be well worth accepting the weight if that's the price of making the engine simpler and cheaper
I swear this channel is hidden in TH-cam. I’ve been watching other channels about space X and remembered the good quality videos I saw on here but couldn’t remember the name. Finally found it and I’m already subbed. They been only putting What About It, Scott manly, and a few others over it.
its because the channel is pretty new and the other channel you mentioned are even more frequend in uploading videos. Another reason is, that the aproximate attention of the viewer on youtube are less than 15 min to a video. the length of the viedos of the channels you mentioned are in that region. The reason why i love CSI-Starbase is, that they give a duck of the algorithm and do, what the audience want: good entertainment and investigation in a movie length.
@@awulf1990 Makes sense. I can tell it’s a ridiculous amount of work to make one of these videos. And I truly appreciate that a lot more than a 15 minute narration with sponsors.
Man, the quality of these videos is unmatched. What a great combination of well-explained engineering detail and entertainment. Laughed harder than I should have at "raw dog" filter comment. Awesome.
We dont care at all if you need to take your time to make these videos, they are just incredible, a true piece of Art. Im amazed by the quality, accurate information and the comedy relief. Thank you!!
But we do and it shows in view count that continues to dwindle. Attention spans are less than they were and people who may have come across and been excited for this guys videos might no longer be on here
Best Space (X) channel on the web, period. You never have CLICKBAIT titles, no terrible AI voiceover and your obvious background research is impeccable. Great work, it is appreciated!
Many technical science TH-cam vids suffer from annoying ridiculous and confusing mispronounced words that destroy meanings and makes technical interpretations in my brain to fart chromosomes. Thanks for your clear and unambiguous narration!!!!
CSI Starbase: It looks like contaminating the propellant supply was the raptors second mistake. Sidekick: what was the first mistake? CSI Starbase: (removes sunglasses) murder. (Roll opening credits)
I agree. Removing complexity from the Raptor is interesting, but if it's to increase the complexity of the Booster, it seems counterproductive. The "best part, no part" does not apply to ice apparently.
@@theplouf5533Well to be fair, they were likely in a difficult situation where fuel leaks in their engines are limiting their capabilities by preventing them from reaching the required power margins, so they probably had to either reduce the complexity of engines by removing parts then deal with the ice later, or put so much time and effort into their engines which would cause delays and limit the amount of R&D they can do with actual flight tests.
@@theplouf5533The present ‘solution’ is to the present problem, which is as a result of how the Raptor-2 engines function and how autogenous pressurisation is accomplished. I agree with Zack’s speculation that just maybe with all the massive internal plumbing changes made to the Raptor-3 engine, that they may have taken the opportunity to have eliminated this issue too. That would remove whole classes of problems and produce weight savings and increase reliability - what’s not to like about that ?
A big benefit of using a heat exchanger to return O2 instead of the post-combustion feed is that all that water and dry ice is doing virtually nothing to pressurize the tank, while still warming up the LOX and acting as 4+ tons of deadweight that should have been exhausted but is instead being carried along. If the heat exchangers added less than the weight of the improved filters plus half the weight of the ice, that'd represent a mass savings on its own, independent of reliability improvments. So maybe 100kg per raptor would be allowable.
On top of that, any increase in Raptor cost due to such a change would only be paid once when fabricating a booster, whereas the cost to clean out the debris from the LOX tank must be payed after every flight. Given the goal of rapid reusability, it makes sense to reduce repeat costs as much as possible. I think that the magnitude of the consequences of using 'dirty' autogen must have been overlooked in the quest to simplify Raptor, and that SpaceX will surely switch to pure gaseous O2 at some point to eliminate the huge cost of dealing with the contaminants.
@pierce9028 I don't really think cleaning out the tank is that much of an issue. It's just oxygen and water. The tank warming up in the texas sun will melt that water fast and it can just be dumped out a drain plug at the bottom. The big issue is the mass penalty for all this filter crap and the potential for engine failures.
Zack’s suggestion that SpaceX have very likely done exactly that - eliminated this issue while introducing heat exchanges - in the new Raptor-3 engine I think is such a beautiful idea, that it’s very likely spot on - and we already know that Raptor-3 is lighter than Raptor-2, so yet another small miracle..
O² for pressurizing would mass ~5.2 t. (~600m³ × 1.429 kg/m³ × 6 bars) So yeah, post-combustion the mass contributed to propulsion but still does not seem worth the complications.
I'm convinced that when his channel's quiet, he's actually busy on a mission to fix some new problem with Starship. That's why they're progressing so fast!
Awesome video as always. I know 80 minutes videos aren't the norm on TH-cam but, to state the obvious, the detail you go into is what makes your videos so good.
49:21 my favorite part of spaceX broadcasts is always the random spanner being thrown across the room 😂 it's been happening for at least half a decade now. Great video
The shop vac bit had me laughing hard. You are one of a very few I would love to have a beer with. Thanks for all the hard work put into these video's.
It's great to have a real engineer analyzing Starship. I loved the line about the improvements in stage separation being a bit like tuning a PID controller. Keep up the amazing work!
SpaceX channels fall into one of four categories. 1. General updates to info sourrounding what SpaceX is doing. 2. People sucking SpaceX off for no reason. 3. People hating on SpaceX for no reason. 4. Channels that provide technical information about SpaceX systems. Channels that are type 4 are very rare, so I'm glad I found another one.
@@aubiecatt to be frank, if you are told to weld this there, you might not know why. I don't think that every single welder knows why they do everything, that seems like something an engineer might give them as plans. For example not sure if they explicitly know that there is that much CO2 snow buildup.
How the hell are you not even a Million sub yet??? This guy is literally the next Everyday Astronaut.. Lets pump him up to a million sub.. He 101% deserves it
This is one of your best, Zack, and all of your episodes are excellent. There's no other space news TH-camr out there doing the level of analysis and depth of explanation that you provide. You are much appreciated!
A correction to the physics explanation. When operating outside the atmosphere, there are no lateral forces due to drag, the orientation with respect to the gravity vector is irrelevant and fuel does not follow the direction of gravity from the perspective of an observer inside the tank. The spacecraft is essentially in free-fall with forces acting on the body due to engine thrust and RCS.
Correct, basically the rocket is in a free fall parabola, only the accelerations of the engines come into play, even so the problem of ice inside the rocket is confirmed by Musk himself, so the analysis beyond that continues being valid
You're a physicist? Gravity doesn't stop existing "outside the atmosphere". Neither do craft and propellant become "weightless" upon exiting the atmosphere. Ballistic freefall trajectories occur both outside and inside the atmosphere. All "operating outside the atmosphere" removes* is the effects of aerodynamic drag (that reentering spacecraft exploit to decelerate from high speeds without using fuel; and skydivers exploit to maneuver themselves with great precision). *Aerodynamic drag still exists "in space" even at extremely high altitudes, as the earth's atmosphere doesn't just extend to a defined height and then stop. At low altitude orbits, unpowered spacecraft can be dragged back to the surface in days or even hours (see the recent loss of an entire flight's worth of Starlink satellites after 2nd stage circularization burn failure); while at somewhat higher altitudes high-drag spacecraft (ex. ISS) need regular altitude boosting to avoid an otherwise inevitable disaster; and derelict spacecraft at higher altitudes still (from Hubble to GEO) may be dragged down in matters of years, decades, or centuries...
The atmosphere is nedded to provide a force acting against gravity, like on an airplane or on starship before the belly flop.If there is no such force it is free fall and nothing falls to the floor in the vehicle , just like on the space station.
If the screen was zig zag (up,down), the particles would get trapped in the low spots keeping the upper part clear. The corrugated pattern would also increase stiffness.
Good idea, I was thinking the same thing with a downward slope. A radial corrugated screen pattern sloped downwards may help collect the agitated solids from vibration and maneuvering to settle down in the lower screen helping the upper screen area to stay clear.
@@johnreed1580 kinda like a regular ice air filter. They might also just put the filter screen higher in the booster, as to avoid having to deal with clogged filter for the lox. I mean, pressurizing gas might have less trouble finding its way through a clogged filter than a liquid.
@@davidtuchscherer6276 I had the same thought But the best part is no part.. So if Raptor3 goes to pure oxygen pressurization, then why upgrade if it it can be temporarily solved with software Maybe flexibility and safety concerns, but maybe not needed. Or maybe it was done (will be done) in addition to software, until we get to Raptor3.
Yep. I was thinking some pockets incorporated into the mesh layers would concentrate and restrain the contaminant hard particles, potentially allowing collection and removal post event. Also, these pockets could be strengthened to eliminate the weight spread over the (lightweight) screen surface. The best part is no part is no part, of course, so the complete elimination of the CO2/H2O contamination is best. When the Raptor3 engines are brought to the Gen3 boosters (presuming a pure LOX autogen) the meshwork can be scaled right back, but for existing (Gen 1&2) SHB an intermediate meshwork filter fix seems to be on the cards.
actually, nvm. BO wont have this issue since they're likely not using hot gas to repressurize the tank. I wonder how they'll do it? Perhaps its easier to have a helium or nitrogen tank to repressurize the LOX booster since hot O2 is such a pain to work with.
Such a fun investigation. It makes me appreciate the subtleties of engineering. It comes down to having to imagine all the possibilities of what could happen, and having a game plan for each. Ignoring any possibility would be foolish. Unless the designers don't have the time or money, a tiny assumption can cost you everything. It's a crazy high stakes game.
Quality and depth of analysis in these presentations is absolutely phenomenal. To be honest I don't know how you manage to put out as many videos of this quality as you do and I have no problem with a month or so between each video.
Zack, the depth and quality of this video even surpasses the excellent videos you've made in the past. In truth, I've seen lesser quality documentaries on award winning PBS's NOVA. Congratulations to you and your team for deserving an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nomination for an Oscar (in my opinion)!
I can feel pasion and dedication in these deep dive videos. Really great deep dive. Also intro was awesome, couldn't imagine better one let alone make it.
Thanks Zac. I too wish there was more frequent deep dives, but fully understand the time required to produce such well thought out and planned content. Unsubscribing is foolish. Yours is the first YT channel that I have seen that explained the ice and snow challenge. Keep doing what you do.
Good evening Zach, as always, your deep dives are very thorough and extremely informative and interesting. Thank you for having a new upload. Have a great Labor Day weekend 😊.
For sure. Quality > quantity, and this is pure QUALITY. This is the only channel (out of many, many I've followed for a long time) I'm seriously considering backing with my vast capital resources (lol).
Zach, I am so blown away by how much insight I'm learning on your shows! So much detail and implementation detail, so much cool info on fuel flow, pressure equalization, behavior of liquids at sub-zero temperatures, fuel contamination, and all that during launch, stage separation, boostback and landing phases. I'm really happy you're making these videos, along with the great animations, the support videos from the construction and launch sites. It's really amazing how you're able to put together some really compelling content! Congrats!
This is really interesting, great work, no.... insanely great work putting all of this together. The investigation, level of detail, presentation, and humor is pro level.
Definitely your best presentation to date. All the great speculation and scenarios aside, you vacuuming the water was way realistic and a totally funny. Thanks, Zach, and to your team as well!
Absolutely phenomenal analysis, Zack! Really appreciate the depth you go into on these videos - there's nothing else like them on the internet! A few additional thoughts: • Ice catcher screens shaped like inverted cones rather than flat plates would help keep the ice from escaping through the stringer gaps, as well as better support the weight by concentrating it near an edge, reduce the moment of inertia by holding mass close to the center line, and reduce the slosh effect. • Once the LOX drops below the screens, ice particles are surrounded by hot ullage gas instead of cold LOX and will start to evaporate. How fast that happens depends on their surface/mass ratio, which is insanely hard to predict. • On top of the contaminants adding dead weight, hot GOX + water/steam + metal is a corrosion nightmare waiting to happen, even for stainless steel. A hot nitrogen purge before refill might get the water out pretty quickly, but the dirty autogenous system is such a cludge that I hope they iterate away from it quickly rather than continue down the rabbit hole of fixing all these issues. As they continue to extract more thrust from Raptor by increasing the mass flow rate, the engine (which is not getting any bigger physically) needs to deliver more hot gas per unit time to maintain ullage pressure, so this problem is only getting harder. Will be surprised and disappointed if they did not build a clean GOX solution into Raptor 3...
Ridiculously good episode. High quality animations, syncing video with telemetry and Zack’s never-ending quest to understand why, this is a gold mine of engineering genius.
Excellent vid; great communication of Engineering and Science. This kind of content is what I wish predominated TH-cam. Congratulations to the CSI Starbase team.
The quality of your channel soars about an order of magnitude beyond that of most of your competitors. I can't believe that you are still aiming for 100.000 subscribers.
I appreciate the time and effort from everyone that contributes to these deep dives. They really give an insight into the challenges faced by SpaceX. Spaces is hard, but reusing your vehicle is even harder.
this really is the best channel covering starship I'm looking forward to your next video and I hope spacex figures out how to just convert the lox into gas for ullage rather than the contaminated preburner exhaust.
Thanks for the shoutout for my Raptor engine cycle analysis. If you every need any engine data let me know. Another great video. I think they might LOx cool the LOx preburner casing and use that to get clean GOx for the tanks. John
Of course! It was extremely helpful for me! Is there even enough surface area on the LOX side to pull that off? I’ve been thinking it would be extremely difficult to do Also is there any chance you can message me On X or something? Would love to chat with you more.
@@CSIStarbase Might have to increase surface area I haven't done the calculation but since they are adding active cooling channels in various areas it seems likely. Your work shows just how much of a headache it is to deal with the combustion products. All that goes away if they add that heat exchanger. This is one part they may want to add.
Another EXCELLENT episode Zach ! We learn lots of new things, and your episodes continue to help us think more outside the box when it comes to rocket problems. I think your speculation about the Raptor-3 is correct - with such massive plumbing changes taking place why would you not use that opportunity to help eliminate this ‘tank snow’ issue ? And it would lead to another weight saving, and complexity reduction too..
A V shaped rather than a flat filter might solve the bypass and structural issues. This will increase the filter area. If I am unclear, the current filter mentioned would look like |-n-| while n is the center tank. I am proposing a | v n v | where the v’s are connected to the edges.
This is what I was thinking, but more like | /| because its a simpler shape. 2 levels would just be for supporting the upper and lower rings of the cone. the cone would resist particulate sloshing around in roll maneuvers and guide particulate away from the gaps around the edges. that guiding mechanism would also act as a cleaning mechanism concentrating particles into the center, assisting flow through the screen. a single large cone also provides more inherent structural support than flat planes
Yes, your videos cover material that none of the other channels do - it’s a real deep dive into technical concepts. Very refreshing and very appealing to anyone with an engineering interest. Highly recommended !
Holy Cow Zach! What an awesome episode! All of your contributors did an amazing job. The thought and time put into this show makes it breath taking and tremendous to watch! Great great job!
As you mention at the end, removing contaminated O2 in the autogenous pressurisation gasses would the the best solution and fit in with the SpaceX motto of the best part is no part. With just pure, clean O2 being used then they can remove tons of mass in the filtration workarounds and be more flexible in it's range of manoeuvres available to use. I think this 100% the eventual solution.
This icing issue has to be sorted as they cant refuel into tanks with ice in them because every time they run the engines more ice will accumulate. Venting to vacuum may get rid of the ice if the temperature in the tank is raised enough to sublimate the ice. Otherwise its like the ice on a comet, there for ever.
Oh yeah good point. The Starship refuel tankers can't be full of 'ice' contaminents either. Will have to be solved before the moon shots. It all adds up Raptor 1&2 were good enough at the time, but they planned pressurisation to change to pure propellant gas. Hopefully v3 has that change. The Space X change to 'Agile' build and test fast at full scale has made to for spectacular progress. Meanwhile Boing and Blue Origin shuffle along trying to achieve perfection before the next step can start.
@@MathewBoorman this has a downside tho, they prolly already have a large number of raptor 2's to burn through and hence might be forced to stick with the filters for a while.
Just found the channel with this video! Such an original idea for a video! Love your deep dives, and your different take on how you think about the engineering on Starship! So great! Subscribed!
Man, every time I see one of your vids I'm blown away by how informative and well-produced you content is. It's so frustrating to see that the other guys get more exposure simply because they spam generic content every day and drown out the better channels like yours. It's easy to put out a new video every day when all you have to do is just repost photos and videos of a construction site. These videos of yours are a completely different league of production with great visual aids and tons of unique information that no one else is talking about. Do you have a team that helps put all this together or do you somehow manage all of this yourself?!
I learned quite early on that CSI Starbase is where it's at when I'm looking for specific information related to what I've been thinking a lot about. Often times, I get those answers and then I get a whole lot more as well! I've been so curious as to how booster gets in the right position for the catch and your detailed examination of that answers all of the questions I had. On top of that, I've learned so much more about how these things work. It's criminal that you have fewer than 100k subs. You guys should be a lot closer to Everyday Astronaut's sub numbers!
Man, they really need to work on a heat exchanger. This is a crazy amount of weight to be adding, not just these gigantic filters either, those tonnes and tonnes of ice now have to be braked through boostback, re entry and at landing which means you need more fuel to land and more fuel to launch that more fuel. The rocket eqution sucks.
Discover how media bias affects space and science coverage. Try Ground News today and get 40% off your subscription: ground.news/csistarbase
Affects? Media exists to steer, including outright lie for "greater good"
For a short term solution they could fire off the staging ring right before or during the landing burn with a drogue followed by a parachute and try to recover it. That's a lot of stainless steel. I could build a yacht with that!
Why do we assume that 1. the surface filters are straight and horizontally flat and not conical like in funnels, and 2. you can cut flat filter surfaces so that the gaps on the outer walls are minimal.
There must be a quote we haven't heard, "The best part is as many parts as possible" - Elon Musk. Or is the work ethos called, "work hard not smart?" There was never the slightest need to dump garbage gas in the LOX tank in the first place.
I wonder when you are up to 12 tons of contamination plus the steel if until you have v3 engine and gaseous oxygen it would not be better to revert to Helium pressurisation for the oxygen tank. Just wondering what the weight penalty would be ?
The video quality is insane, this might as well be a documentary on netflix
No, a Netflix documentary ist never so much hands in, this is better
It's a tour de force.
lol it would be awesome to be able to make a series on Netlix. I think the interest level in space flight would have to be 10x greater than what it is currently in order for something like that to happen
@@CSIStarbase that might be happening after this catch attempt. wearing CSI T-shirts in a fairpark helps too lol
It's better than some NOVA documentaries on PBS, which have been enshitifying for years with a slow, festering infection of Historicus Channelitis .
The one thing that is unfortunate about using a sponsor for these episodes is that when I need to pin an important comment….i can not do that lol
Anyway, to address the gravitational settling that I mentioned in the episode: I’m aware that this is an incorrect assumption. Instead the particles would likely shift to one side of the tank during the initial flip maneuver. Once it’s gathered to one side, the roll would then assist with throwing particles over the edge of the screen.
Since I can’t pin this comment…please give it a thumbs up if you see it to help move it up towards the top of the list 😂.
Thanks for the correction, this makes more sense. Maybe edit the description if the pinned comment is not possible?
comment on it helps as well I think? in my impression, comments with replies are more often "promoted".
Yeah it's in freefall so gravity can't move anything inside. Until it enters the atmosphere, then drag is starting to pull backwards and this might be directional.
@@JorisRobijn came to confirm why thoughts as well. I'm no rocket scientist or anything but I thought it was a weird assumption that gravity was pulling the ice down when the rocket would, effectively, be in free fall in that direction/vector.
Commenting to keep it up high
When SpaceX suffers an RUD, they first check the CSI Starbase video for troubleshooting.
Agreed
@@ShawFujikawa Safe
Which will be delayed by just 1 or 2 months after the RUD.. lol
Haha love CSI starbase
Facts!
Don't apologize for taking your time to be as accurate as you can. The work you put in to this is incredible. Bravo!
Those extra screens are a temporary engineering aberration. Until, the engine can give pure gaseous oxygen. That is the only long term solution. Great job as always Zack.
Yeah, I can't imagine these giant screen to be lighter than the heat exchangers.
However, keep in mind that hot pre burner gas is hotter than a heat exchanger. They can save tons of weight in just hotter and less dense gas because of how large the volume is.
They also had issues with pressurization before Raptor 2, pressure collapse was an issue multiple times. Hotter gas also helps solve this. You're fighting the gas condensing into a liquid, and the propellant is sub chilled on top of that increasing the issue. @@johnathanclayton2887
I agree. Sidestepping the contamination issue altogether is surely the right move.
@@johnathanclayton2887 not lighter, perhaps, but much simpler. It could be well worth accepting the weight if that's the price of making the engine simpler and cheaper
i imagine the engineer reviewing the in-tank camera footage going: "ughhhhhhhhhh not again!"
Oh boy I can’t wait until CSI does a video on the super heavy landing tower catch
For murder!? =)
OMG yessss!
I swear this channel is hidden in TH-cam. I’ve been watching other channels about space X and remembered the good quality videos I saw on here but couldn’t remember the name. Finally found it and I’m already subbed. They been only putting What About It, Scott manly, and a few others over it.
Fr
its because the channel is pretty new and the other channel you mentioned are even more frequend in uploading videos.
Another reason is, that the aproximate attention of the viewer on youtube are less than 15 min to a video. the length of the viedos of the channels you mentioned are in that region.
The reason why i love CSI-Starbase is, that they give a duck of the algorithm and do, what the audience want: good entertainment and investigation in a movie length.
@@awulf1990 Makes sense. I can tell it’s a ridiculous amount of work to make one of these videos. And I truly appreciate that a lot more than a 15 minute narration with sponsors.
This channel is not hidden. Dude posts once every 8 months.
@@awulf1990it’s not because they’re new it’s because he doesn’t post frequently. TH-cam algorthim is not going to wait for him
Most underrated channel for rocket science!
Man, the quality of these videos is unmatched.
What a great combination of well-explained engineering detail and entertainment. Laughed harder than I should have at "raw dog" filter comment. Awesome.
I almost spilled my glass of liquid oxygen that I have lying around my house.
We dont care at all if you need to take your time to make these videos, they are just incredible, a true piece of Art. Im amazed by the quality, accurate information and the comedy relief. Thank you!!
But we do and it shows in view count that continues to dwindle. Attention spans are less than they were and people who may have come across and been excited for this guys videos might no longer be on here
Even more so for those of us that don't have a bottle of liquid oxygen lying around the house.
Best Space (X) channel on the web, period. You never have CLICKBAIT titles, no terrible AI voiceover and your obvious background research is impeccable. Great work, it is appreciated!
Many technical science TH-cam vids suffer from annoying ridiculous and confusing mispronounced words that destroy meanings and makes technical interpretations in my brain to fart chromosomes. Thanks for your clear and unambiguous narration!!!!
There's no reason this channel should have only 83k subscribers.
Thanks for another great video, Zack!!
There is a reason he posts like once a year
CSI Starbase: It looks like contaminating the propellant supply was the raptors second mistake.
Sidekick: what was the first mistake?
CSI Starbase: (removes sunglasses) murder.
(Roll opening credits)
I agree. Removing complexity from the Raptor is interesting, but if it's to increase the complexity of the Booster, it seems counterproductive.
The "best part, no part" does not apply to ice apparently.
@@theplouf5533Well to be fair, they were likely in a difficult situation where fuel leaks in their engines are limiting their capabilities by preventing them from reaching the required power margins, so they probably had to either reduce the complexity of engines by removing parts then deal with the ice later, or put so much time and effort into their engines which would cause delays and limit the amount of R&D they can do with actual flight tests.
@@theplouf5533The present ‘solution’ is to the present problem, which is as a result of how the Raptor-2 engines function and how autogenous pressurisation is accomplished.
I agree with Zack’s speculation that just maybe with all the massive internal plumbing changes made to the Raptor-3 engine, that they may have taken the opportunity to have eliminated this issue too. That would remove whole classes of problems and produce weight savings and increase reliability - what’s not to like about that ?
@@theplouf5533”the best ice is no ice”- we’ll see whether they can pull that off somehow!
@@Wordsmiths Or in this case the best snow is no snow.
A big benefit of using a heat exchanger to return O2 instead of the post-combustion feed is that all that water and dry ice is doing virtually nothing to pressurize the tank, while still warming up the LOX and acting as 4+ tons of deadweight that should have been exhausted but is instead being carried along.
If the heat exchangers added less than the weight of the improved filters plus half the weight of the ice, that'd represent a mass savings on its own, independent of reliability improvments. So maybe 100kg per raptor would be allowable.
On top of that, any increase in Raptor cost due to such a change would only be paid once when fabricating a booster, whereas the cost to clean out the debris from the LOX tank must be payed after every flight. Given the goal of rapid reusability, it makes sense to reduce repeat costs as much as possible.
I think that the magnitude of the consequences of using 'dirty' autogen must have been overlooked in the quest to simplify Raptor, and that SpaceX will surely switch to pure gaseous O2 at some point to eliminate the huge cost of dealing with the contaminants.
Yes, the weight penalty for the ever more elaborate filtration systems is getting crazy. They really need to figure out the heat exchangers.
@pierce9028 I don't really think cleaning out the tank is that much of an issue. It's just oxygen and water. The tank warming up in the texas sun will melt that water fast and it can just be dumped out a drain plug at the bottom. The big issue is the mass penalty for all this filter crap and the potential for engine failures.
Zack’s suggestion that SpaceX have very likely done exactly that - eliminated this issue while introducing heat exchanges - in the new Raptor-3 engine I think is such a beautiful idea, that it’s very likely spot on - and we already know that Raptor-3 is lighter than Raptor-2, so yet another small miracle..
O² for pressurizing would mass ~5.2 t. (~600m³ × 1.429 kg/m³ × 6 bars)
So yeah, post-combustion the mass contributed to propulsion but still does not seem worth the complications.
Zack, your videos are full of insight and chuckle-filled style! Many thanks.
Zack videos are just amazingly beautiful. I don’t get why you don’t have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Thanks so much brother!
I'm convinced that when his channel's quiet, he's actually busy on a mission to fix some new problem with Starship. That's why they're progressing so fast!
Awesome video as always. I know 80 minutes videos aren't the norm on TH-cam but, to state the obvious, the detail you go into is what makes your videos so good.
Super Heavy: The World’s Largest Stainless Steel Snow Globe!
Ha ha ha😂
Seriously tho 😂
Awesome comment! Ha Ha ha Ha!
What a way to deliver a message; Engineering analysis, data review, insight and a touch of humour. Well done.
49:21 my favorite part of spaceX broadcasts is always the random spanner being thrown across the room 😂 it's been happening for at least half a decade now. Great video
The shop vac bit had me laughing hard. You are one of a very few I would love to have a beer with. Thanks for all the hard work put into these video's.
Thanks!! lol glad you enjoyed that part. I try to be my natural self in these videos instead of overly professional.
Every single detail about this video is perfect, Zack even added the second tower in the CGI background 🤯🤯
Glad someone noticed that. Virtual Space 3D does our studio design. There are a lot of little details they added in there for this one.
He blew a major detail about gravity.
@@mattrothe149Please specify?
It's great to have a real engineer analyzing Starship. I loved the line about the improvements in stage separation being a bit like tuning a PID controller. Keep up the amazing work!
This is the absolute best Starship content on the Internet!
SpaceX channels fall into one of four categories.
1. General updates to info sourrounding what SpaceX is doing.
2. People sucking SpaceX off for no reason.
3. People hating on SpaceX for no reason.
4. Channels that provide technical information about SpaceX systems.
Channels that are type 4 are very rare, so I'm glad I found another one.
Thank you!!! That means a lot!
SpaceX staff watching this be like, Oh now I see why we did that 😂🤣
Nah
@@aubiecatt to be frank, if you are told to weld this there, you might not know why. I don't think that every single welder knows why they do everything, that seems like something an engineer might give them as plans. For example not sure if they explicitly know that there is that much CO2 snow buildup.
@@aubiecatt Humans are not so different from each other, even those we call engineers. (Except Zack, he's a god.)
Confirmed.
How the hell are you not even a Million sub yet??? This guy is literally the next Everyday Astronaut.. Lets pump him up to a million sub..
He 101% deserves it
This is one of your best, Zack, and all of your episodes are excellent. There's no other space news TH-camr out there doing the level of analysis and depth of explanation that you provide. You are much appreciated!
Thank you!
A correction to the physics explanation. When operating outside the atmosphere, there are no lateral forces due to drag, the orientation with respect to the gravity vector is irrelevant and fuel does not follow the direction of gravity from the perspective of an observer inside the tank. The spacecraft is essentially in free-fall with forces acting on the body due to engine thrust and RCS.
Highly important component of this that needs his attention.
Correct, basically the rocket is in a free fall parabola, only the accelerations of the engines come into play, even so the problem of ice inside the rocket is confirmed by Musk himself, so the analysis beyond that continues being valid
You're a physicist? Gravity doesn't stop existing "outside the atmosphere". Neither do craft and propellant become "weightless" upon exiting the atmosphere. Ballistic freefall trajectories occur both outside and inside the atmosphere. All "operating outside the atmosphere" removes* is the effects of aerodynamic drag (that reentering spacecraft exploit to decelerate from high speeds without using fuel; and skydivers exploit to maneuver themselves with great precision).
*Aerodynamic drag still exists "in space" even at extremely high altitudes, as the earth's atmosphere doesn't just extend to a defined height and then stop. At low altitude orbits, unpowered spacecraft can be dragged back to the surface in days or even hours (see the recent loss of an entire flight's worth of Starlink satellites after 2nd stage circularization burn failure); while at somewhat higher altitudes high-drag spacecraft (ex. ISS) need regular altitude boosting to avoid an otherwise inevitable disaster; and derelict spacecraft at higher altitudes still (from Hubble to GEO) may be dragged down in matters of years, decades, or centuries...
Or, the Einstein explanation: The vehicle including the propellant is moving on a straight line through space time
The atmosphere is nedded to provide a force acting against gravity, like on an airplane or on starship before the belly flop.If there is no such force it is free fall and nothing falls to the floor in the vehicle , just like on the space station.
The amount of research in this video is phenomenal.
That's cool that Space X let you inside the booster with the shop vac
That's really funny😁😁😁
Your vids are so exceptionally high quality - you deserve 20x the subscribers you have and I'm confident you'll get there with this level of quality.
If the screen was zig zag (up,down), the particles would get trapped in the low spots keeping the upper part clear. The corrugated pattern would also increase stiffness.
Good idea, I was thinking the same thing with a downward slope.
A radial corrugated screen pattern sloped downwards may help collect the agitated solids from vibration and maneuvering to settle down in the lower screen helping the upper screen area to stay clear.
and increase the surface area.
@@johnreed1580 kinda like a regular ice air filter.
They might also just put the filter screen higher in the booster, as to avoid having to deal with clogged filter for the lox. I mean, pressurizing gas might have less trouble finding its way through a clogged filter than a liquid.
@@davidtuchscherer6276 I had the same thought But the best part is no part.. So if Raptor3 goes to pure oxygen pressurization, then why upgrade if it it can be temporarily solved with software Maybe flexibility and safety concerns, but maybe not needed. Or maybe it was done (will be done) in addition to software, until we get to Raptor3.
Yep. I was thinking some pockets incorporated into the mesh layers would concentrate and restrain the contaminant hard particles, potentially allowing collection and removal post event. Also, these pockets could be strengthened to eliminate the weight spread over the (lightweight) screen surface.
The best part is no part is no part, of course, so the complete elimination of the CO2/H2O contamination is best.
When the Raptor3 engines are brought to the Gen3 boosters (presuming a pure LOX autogen) the meshwork can be scaled right back, but for existing (Gen 1&2) SHB an intermediate meshwork filter fix seems to be on the cards.
The legend returns. With a long form video no less.
I'm glad you're feeling better and back to creating these amazing videos!
Iron man: "Did you fix the icing problem?"
Iron Monger: "What icing problem?"
CSI Starbase: *roll intro*
It’s the icing on the cake !
Elon to Bezos later this year 😂
actually, nvm. BO wont have this issue since they're likely not using hot gas to repressurize the tank. I wonder how they'll do it?
Perhaps its easier to have a helium or nitrogen tank to repressurize the LOX booster since hot O2 is such a pain to work with.
Such a fun investigation. It makes me appreciate the subtleties of engineering. It comes down to having to imagine all the possibilities of what could happen, and having a game plan for each. Ignoring any possibility would be foolish. Unless the designers don't have the time or money, a tiny assumption can cost you everything. It's a crazy high stakes game.
Quality and depth of analysis in these presentations is absolutely phenomenal. To be honest I don't know how you manage to put out as many videos of this quality as you do and I have no problem with a month or so between each video.
I love how the background is up to date with tower 2
Zack, the depth and quality of this video even surpasses the excellent videos you've made in the past. In truth, I've seen lesser quality documentaries on award winning PBS's NOVA. Congratulations to you and your team for deserving an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nomination for an Oscar (in my opinion)!
Thank you! That means a lot!
It's unbelievable how good this channel is. Congrats Zach and team!
I can feel pasion and dedication in these deep dive videos. Really great deep dive. Also intro was awesome, couldn't imagine better one let alone make it.
Thanks! I had a feeling I might lose people in the first 30 seconds of that intro
@@CSIStarbase THAT OPENING with that music was the best intro you have ever done like wow!!! i love that intro u did
Thanks Zac. I too wish there was more frequent deep dives, but fully understand the time required to produce such well thought out and planned content. Unsubscribing is foolish. Yours is the first YT channel that I have seen that explained the ice and snow challenge. Keep doing what you do.
YT may be doing it automatically “for” the viewer.
Good evening Zach, as always, your deep dives are very thorough and extremely informative and interesting.
Thank you for having a new upload. Have a great Labor Day weekend 😊.
Very well done, Zack and CSI Starbase Team! Incredibly informative.
The GOAT is back 🙏
Screaming like a cheerleader rn
For sure. Quality > quantity, and this is pure QUALITY. This is the only channel (out of many, many I've followed for a long time) I'm seriously considering backing with my vast capital resources (lol).
The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment. Thanks, Zack!
Zach, I am so blown away by how much insight I'm learning on your shows! So much detail and implementation detail, so much cool info on fuel flow, pressure equalization, behavior of liquids at sub-zero temperatures, fuel contamination, and all that during launch, stage separation, boostback and landing phases. I'm really happy you're making these videos, along with the great animations, the support videos from the construction and launch sites. It's really amazing how you're able to put together some really compelling content! Congrats!
I love that animation at the beginning of these videos. 👍
Zack IMO those t-shirts aren't outdated because they now qualify as retro - which means you can charge more for them 👍
Damn, this is an insane level of detail and a outstanding investigation. I actually impressed I'm somewhat being able to follow.
I loved this deep dive. The attention to detail is supperb and the graphic / animations / simulations are so good. Thank you 😀😀
This is really interesting, great work, no.... insanely great work putting all of this together. The investigation, level of detail, presentation, and humor is pro level.
Love love love your work.
NO ONE DOSE SPACE LIKE “SpaceX” OR “CSI SPACE”
Thank you Zack
this man is obsessed.. a maniacal schizo turbo autism engineering dissection of starship development. I love it
Definitely your best presentation to date. All the great speculation and scenarios aside, you vacuuming the water was way realistic and a totally funny. Thanks, Zach, and to your team as well!
Always looking forward to watch a new CSI episode, learning tons of new stuff and reactivating Physics from Uni . Take your time Zack, it's worth it.🎉
Absolutely phenomenal analysis, Zack! Really appreciate the depth you go into on these videos - there's nothing else like them on the internet! A few additional thoughts:
• Ice catcher screens shaped like inverted cones rather than flat plates would help keep the ice from escaping through the stringer gaps, as well as better support the weight by concentrating it near an edge, reduce the moment of inertia by holding mass close to the center line, and reduce the slosh effect.
• Once the LOX drops below the screens, ice particles are surrounded by hot ullage gas instead of cold LOX and will start to evaporate. How fast that happens depends on their surface/mass ratio, which is insanely hard to predict.
• On top of the contaminants adding dead weight, hot GOX + water/steam + metal is a corrosion nightmare waiting to happen, even for stainless steel. A hot nitrogen purge before refill might get the water out pretty quickly, but the dirty autogenous system is such a cludge that I hope they iterate away from it quickly rather than continue down the rabbit hole of fixing all these issues.
As they continue to extract more thrust from Raptor by increasing the mass flow rate, the engine (which is not getting any bigger physically) needs to deliver more hot gas per unit time to maintain ullage pressure, so this problem is only getting harder. Will be surprised and disappointed if they did not build a clean GOX solution into Raptor 3...
Incredible episode, but now I wont be happy until I own a Starship booster snow globe
Thanks Adam, yeah it was a merch thought lol. hope you’re well
Ridiculously good episode. High quality animations, syncing video with telemetry and Zack’s never-ending quest to understand why, this is a gold mine of engineering genius.
bro you have one of the best engineering channels period!
Dude. This is an INSANE amount of detail on a rocket whose design is not full public knowledge. INCREDIBLE work.
"270 Ton Space Ballerina"😂
Well done episode - and really astonishing that you where ale to figure this out. THX to all of you guys 👍
Once again, incredible quality. Just wonderful. I bet EM himself watches these. If not, perhaps he should!
I can't believe I just now stumbled across this channel, great content! You deserve way more subs.
Wow! That was an amazing analysis supported by amazing graphics! Thanks so much! (Spelling corrected)
Zack your videos are so comprehensive, there are deep dives on things we otherwise might never know about. Love your work. Thanks for all you do. 🙌
Excellent vid; great communication of Engineering and Science. This kind of content is what I wish predominated TH-cam. Congratulations to the CSI Starbase team.
China’s version of TikTok focuses on math and science. Then again, they obsessively don’t want their _own_ culture to have sociological ruin.
I love how technical these hardware analyses are. I guess it’s redundant mentioning this since that’s the bread and butter of this channel.
Amazing analysis, explanation and visualizations!!! Thank you very much!!
The quality of your channel soars about an order of magnitude beyond that of most of your competitors. I can't believe that you are still aiming for 100.000 subscribers.
I appreciate the time and effort from everyone that contributes to these deep dives. They really give an insight into the challenges faced by SpaceX. Spaces is hard, but reusing your vehicle is even harder.
That vacuum scene, I’m dead. That’s funny. Excellent video as always, appreciate your efforts!
this really is the best channel covering starship I'm looking forward to your next video and I hope spacex figures out how to just convert the lox into gas for ullage rather than the contaminated preburner exhaust.
for rapid reuse they cant be fishing carbon soot out of the lox tank.
@@chrisquinn8150
The CO2 will evaporate to gas. And Zack will still have to vacuum the water.
Thanks for the shoutout for my Raptor engine cycle analysis. If you every need any engine data let me know. Another great video. I think they might LOx cool the LOx preburner casing and use that to get clean GOx for the tanks. John
Of course! It was extremely helpful for me!
Is there even enough surface area on the LOX side to pull that off? I’ve been thinking it would be extremely difficult to do
Also is there any chance you can message me
On X or something? Would love to chat with you more.
@@CSIStarbase Might have to increase surface area I haven't done the calculation but since they are adding active cooling channels in various areas it seems likely. Your work shows just how much of a headache it is to deal with the combustion products. All that goes away if they add that heat exchanger. This is one part they may want to add.
Thanks! Zach and team. Superb investigation, content, and simulations. It’s so cool to see the inner workings of starship.
Thank you!!
Another EXCELLENT episode Zach !
We learn lots of new things, and your episodes continue to help us think more outside the box when it comes to rocket problems.
I think your speculation about the Raptor-3 is correct - with such massive plumbing changes taking place why would you not use that opportunity to help eliminate this ‘tank snow’ issue ?
And it would lead to another weight saving, and complexity reduction too..
A V shaped rather than a flat filter might solve the bypass and structural issues. This will increase the filter area. If I am unclear, the current filter mentioned would look like |-n-| while n is the center tank. I am proposing a | v n v | where the v’s are connected to the edges.
This is what I was thinking, but more like |
/| because its a simpler shape. 2 levels would just be for supporting the upper and lower rings of the cone. the cone would resist particulate sloshing around in roll maneuvers and guide particulate away from the gaps around the edges. that guiding mechanism would also act as a cleaning mechanism concentrating particles into the center, assisting flow through the screen. a single large cone also provides more inherent structural support than flat planes
@@dacthewerewolf8425 good call, getting a lower siphon is what is needed.
Yes, your videos cover material that none of the other channels do - it’s a real deep dive into technical concepts.
Very refreshing and very appealing to anyone with an engineering interest.
Highly recommended !
bar none, the best channel on youtube
The quality of this content is amazing. Congratulations to everybody involved. You guys rock ❤
That intro needs to get enlisted for the world intro championships
Thank you!!!! Wasn’t sure if people would enjoy that or not at first lol
Holy Cow Zach! What an awesome episode! All of your contributors did an amazing job. The thought and time put into this show makes it breath taking and tremendous to watch! Great great job!
Bro, you are incredibly intelligent. Solid video my man.
I'm always gladly watching your videos, it's really amazing how you deduct important conclusions from just small hints. Really nice job!👍
deduct -> deduce
As you mention at the end, removing contaminated O2 in the autogenous pressurisation gasses would the the best solution and fit in with the SpaceX motto of the best part is no part. With just pure, clean O2 being used then they can remove tons of mass in the filtration workarounds and be more flexible in it's range of manoeuvres available to use.
I think this 100% the eventual solution.
Great work!
Truly the leader in reporting on the technical issues.
This icing issue has to be sorted as they cant refuel into tanks with ice in them because every time they run the engines more ice will accumulate. Venting to vacuum may get rid of the ice if the temperature in the tank is raised enough to sublimate the ice. Otherwise its like the ice on a comet, there for ever.
Oh yeah good point. The Starship refuel tankers can't be full of 'ice' contaminents either. Will have to be solved before the moon shots.
It all adds up Raptor 1&2 were good enough at the time, but they planned pressurisation to change to pure propellant gas. Hopefully v3 has that change.
The Space X change to 'Agile' build and test fast at full scale has made to for spectacular progress.
Meanwhile Boing and Blue Origin shuffle along trying to achieve perfection before the next step can start.
Just convert the ices to methane and lox /s
@@MathewBoorman this has a downside tho, they prolly already have a large number of raptor 2's to burn through and hence might be forced to stick with the filters for a while.
1:13:18 even the peep has a delay, Love it! Great episode!
that water vacuuming simulation looked too real😂
Just found the channel with this video! Such an original idea for a video! Love your deep dives, and your different take on how you think about the engineering on Starship! So great! Subscribed!
The Chinese are very grateful for all this information on how to build their Starship clone! 🧐
🤣
It will probably blow up
The CCP has recalled its spies due to CSI video’s providing more intel about starship than they ever found undercover 😅
You can imitate the water but you can't copy the fountain (which, in the end, is the genius brains within SpaceX's engineering team).
@@CSIStarbase That's an essential part of the game.
Excellent! Best content available on the inter workings of Starship! Please keep producing!!! Very educational and thought provoking!
Cannt wait…. You always bring us the good deep dive….
Man, every time I see one of your vids I'm blown away by how informative and well-produced you content is. It's so frustrating to see that the other guys get more exposure simply because they spam generic content every day and drown out the better channels like yours. It's easy to put out a new video every day when all you have to do is just repost photos and videos of a construction site. These videos of yours are a completely different league of production with great visual aids and tons of unique information that no one else is talking about.
Do you have a team that helps put all this together or do you somehow manage all of this yourself?!
Another banger deep dive by CSI Starbase
👏😎
I learned quite early on that CSI Starbase is where it's at when I'm looking for specific information related to what I've been thinking a lot about. Often times, I get those answers and then I get a whole lot more as well! I've been so curious as to how booster gets in the right position for the catch and your detailed examination of that answers all of the questions I had. On top of that, I've learned so much more about how these things work. It's criminal that you have fewer than 100k subs. You guys should be a lot closer to Everyday Astronaut's sub numbers!
Well done man!
The amount of details is insane. Thanks for all the work and efforts.
Man, they really need to work on a heat exchanger. This is a crazy amount of weight to be adding, not just these gigantic filters either, those tonnes and tonnes of ice now have to be braked through boostback, re entry and at landing which means you need more fuel to land and more fuel to launch that more fuel. The rocket eqution sucks.