All language subtitles for SpaceX Starship Landing Achieved! – Why Did It Work This Time-

Kind thanks go to Surfshark VPN
for sponsoring todays episode!

SpaceX’s Starship SN15 did it.

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

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

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

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

Starship Updates

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

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

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

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

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

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

SpaceX Starbase, south Texas. United States.

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

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

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

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

SN15 already is part of the
next and fourth generation.

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

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

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

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

Kage,

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

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

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

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

All three Raptor engines ignited
without any visual problem.

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

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

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

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

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

Unlike a Falcon 9 booster for example,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

do the swing maneuver and start
the final landing burn.

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

possibly two and then do the landing burn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Starship they can actually
analyze after the flight.

SN15 enabled SpaceX to do exactly that.

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

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

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

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

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

It survived.

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

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

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

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

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

This will likely have damaged the
Raptor engines beyond repair.

This isn’t a big thing though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and workers involved in building it.

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

Thank you SpaceX crew. You are absolutely amazing!

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

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

Let’s find out!

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

Liked it? Give it a thumbs up.

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

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

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

Or get some fresh Waiwear in our merch store!

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

Ready to make you look awesome
for the next launch!

Thank you for all your support!

You Rock!

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

An orbital Starship flight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

fog above the suborbital fuel farm.

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

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

SN10 took 6 days longer. So,

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

we might actually get two starship
flights this month.

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

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

an orbital Starship flight, rather soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nice jackets for the tanks to stay warm..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would like to ask you the same.

What do you think makes all this important?

What do you think will the implications be?

How will all this change our future?

Write it down in the comments!

I am eager to hear your thoughts!

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

The deal is actually pretty sweet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surf with your own set of rules.

Link is in the description.

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

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

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

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

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

I am looking forward to thanking you in person!

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

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

Without you there would be any streams!

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

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