China On Mars Before NASA & Starship SN5 To Hop

so it appears that the launch of NASA’s
perseverance Rover has been delayedagain this is getting a bit too close
for our taste now because the launchwindow is only one month wide and
China’s Mars mission meanwhile surpriseis not being delayed so will China’s
Mars mission be able to reach Marsbefore NASA then we of course have to
take a look at the current progress ofstarship at Boca Chica updates regarding
Elon’s annual starship presentationDr. Zubrin saying that SpaceX could land on
Mars before 2030 the first joint missionof SpaceX and space force and also the
progress at Blue Origin and the ula ourobligatory SLS rant SpaceX forcing
Europe to go reusable a bit on the Lightsail 2mission and even a steampunk robot
for icy moon exploration really a lotto talk about so stay tunedso before we come to the delay of NASA’s
perseverance Rover and what anembarrassment it would be if China would
launch their Mars rover before NASAlet’s first analyze the current progress
of starship at Boca Chica on theweekend the latest Raptor engine SN27 arrived at the launch pad where thestarship SN5 prototype is
currently attached by the way SN5 hasalready successfully completed a series
of cryo pressure testsnothing leaked or ruptured which is a
very good sign because as you knowstarship SN3 collapsed during such a
cryogenic pressure test another hurdleis out of the way and now having
installed the raptor engine static firetests are commencing this is another
hurdle which cost the lives of someother starship prototypes should
starship SN5 survive the static firetests there is a good chance that we can
still witness the 150 meter hopping testthis week cameron county road closure
dates indicate that we can see the hoppingtest as soon as on Wednesday July the
8th with back up dates on the followingtwo days so fingers crossed to finally
see this epic event because it’s been 10months now since the last time we could
see such a spectacular event withstarhopper and the annual starship
presentation will take place inSeptember this year as Elon indicated
in this tweet here this makes sense asthe last starship presentations also
took place in the September timeframehopefully we can learn some interesting
updates on the efficiency of the new304 l stainless steel alloy and some
design changes for starship andsuper-heavy maybe even an updated
roadmap for future starship Moon andMars missions ok so now finally about
the Mars perseverance rover we rememberthat initially the launch of this
important mission was set for the 17thof July the Mars launch window by the
way is only open from mid-july tomid-august the cause for this delay were
some problems with the ground supportequipment but now the launch has been
delayed again to the 30th of Julybecause of some problems with the Atlas
5 rocket upon which the rover will belaunched yeah the ula rocket that
figures if the launch gets delayed toafter mid August then that’s it
then we have to wait a full 26 monthsfor the next launch window to open and
that would be super embarrassing notonly because by that time we might
actually see SpaceX cargo starshipslaunched towards Mars but no because the
Chinese also have their own Mars missionin the pipeline and guess what this one
is not being delayed its launch isstill set for between the 20th and 25th
of July as initially planned theperseverance rover is really important
because it will have a lot ofinstruments onboard such as the SHERLOC instrument which would be able todetect organic molecules and thus to
indirectly detect the presence ofpotential Martian life while the Chinese
Mars mission doesn’t contain aninstrument for such a purpose still it
is a very complex mission it consists ofan orbiter a lander and a rover
scientific instruments include aground-penetrating radar a
meteorological measurement instrumentand a magnetic field detector so the
Chinese Mars rover could offer somevaluable insights on Mars local magnetic
field strength weather and possiblepermafrost layers below the ground it
would be super embarrassing if NASA’sMars rover would only make it to Mars in
2022 so we really hope that NASA and ulawill get their problems under control
talking of ula they now got the first BE-4engine delivered from Blue Origin for
their future Vulcan rocket this is thefuture rocket that will be so totally
reusable that it can even get this reusethe engines
the engines these are by the way thesame engines that will power the new
Glenn rocket of Blue Origin which alreadyhas been flying since a long long time
in these renderings here in realityhowever who knows when ula and Blue
Origin a perfect match we’d say aperfect match
and besides ula and Blue Origin whatelse is super-slow ladies and gentlemen
that’s rightSLS the SLS Center core avionics check is
currently going on at Stennis Spacesorry I mean Stennis I’m probably not
allowed to say this anymore right it’sit’s not it’s not PC right anyway this
Center core avionics check is the secondof eight green run tests of the SLS
Center core for artemis one and tofurther show their unconditional support
and endless love for SLS NASA orderedadditional space shuttle we mean of
course SLS solid rocket boosters fromNorthrop Grumman for an additional six
Artemis missions so until Artemis nineArtemis one will be the uncrewed test
flight of Orion launched with the SLS tocircle the moon Artemis 2 will be a
crewed circling of Orion around the moonso basically an almost one-to-one repeat
of Apollo 8 only 53 years after Apollo 8and then Artemis 3 will finally foresee
the first mannedI mean crewed manned is also not PC enough landing on the moon which iscurrently planned for 2024 we still kind
of doubt that NASA will be able to pullthis off especially with all the
political opposition and it’s not evensure if NASA will actually get the
necessary budget in order to performthis feat but we shouldn’t worry because
if NASA won’t do it then SpaceX willcertainly land their own astronauts on
the moon with starship probably aroundthat time in other News dr. Robert
Zubrin the famous author of the case forMars says that
he believes SpaceX could land astronautson Mars before 2030 he said quote if
starship is flying regularly tolow-earth orbit by 2024 the next
president will ask his or her advisorscan we get to Mars before the end of my
second term the answer will be yes sothen it will happen by making the
mission practical SpaceX will make itsellable we partly agree with dr. Zubrin
here as we also believe that a crewedSpaceX Mars mission could very well
happen before 2030 but we kind of doubtthat NASA could have starship
human-ratedso fast of course we hope to be
surprised but you shouldn’t forget howslow NASA usually is with such things in
our opinion it’s more likely that SpaceXwill just completely bypass NASA and
land their own people on Mars withstarship and super-heavy because
remember that thanks to the income fromStarlink by the mid-2020s SpaceX will
have enough funds to carry out their ownMoon and Mars missions regarding space
force the youngest branch of the u. s. forces just launched their very first
mission it certainly is a top secretmission flying a troop of Space Marines
to low-earth orbit to space force’ssecret space station where they will
perform zero-g combat training in orderto prepare for future zero-g space
battles right almost this first missionof space force was a gps satellite so
really very very humble beginnings atleast it was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9
rocket a very smart choice by the wayon June the 30th working together with
spaceX is already certainly a big stepinto the right direction
now when starship will be finished wesaid it time and time again and we
maintain our position we will sooner orlater see a space force variant of
starshipespecially after Elon’s remarks on that topic about which we talkedin this video here in other news SpaceX
is not only completely disrupting thelaunch business of the old complacent
companies like ula and agencies likeRoscosmos but No Europe is also
feeling the pressure from SpaceXso much so that Thierry Breton the European
Commissioner for internal market hassaid that Ariane 6 will basically be
DOAbecause of SpaceX and that if Europe
wants to stay competitive it needs tostart working on a fully reusable Ariane seven ASAP that’s already a quite goodinsight but we think even so it might be
too lateAriane six is scheduled to have its first
test flight in 2021so Ariane 7 is extremely unlikely to have
first test flights before 2025 best caseand as we know by that time starship
will have made all other Rockets reallyall other Rockets completely obsolete so
we think that ula Roscosmos and Arianespace will end up being the Nokias of the
spaceflight industry that’s what happenswhen you sleep for too long and when you
sleep on innovation now the only chancewe think Europe will have will be to
charter some SpaceX starships for theirown missions and we are saying that as
Europeans in more positive news lightsail 2which has been circling the earth
for one year now and as you remember waslaunched into space among many other
payloads with a Falcon Heavy Bruce Bettslightsail program manager and the chief
scientist at the Planetary Society saidthat the overarching goal
technologically was to demonstratecontrolled solar sail propulsion and
this goal is now successfully completedby lightsail 2 this is excellent news
because light sails are now the singlebest technology
which could enable us to visit otherstar systems in the coming decades no
other technology is currently advancedenough to offer us that possibility
breakthrough starshot will attemptexactly that so having a lightsail
adjust its trajectory is a superimportant feat because without many course
corrections there cannot be a flyby ofexoplanets in nearby star systems and for
all of you steampunk lovers out therewhich we hope there are many because come on steampunk is probably some ofthe coolest stuff ever invented by
humans together with cyberpunk thisconceptual robot is being currently
investigated at NASA’s Jet PropulsionLaboratory this soccer ball-sized robot
called Sparrowwould hop around on Europa or Enceladus
it will old-school heat up water andrelease the steam in a controlled manner
because the gravity is so low on thesemoons the robot would be able to hop a
few meters with a single hop we thinkthat’s a really cool idea which we hope
to see in action on Europa or Enceladushopefully before starship will land
thereand if you’re wondering if spaceX would
actually be able to colonize the Moonand Mars at the same time you can check
out this video right here so thanks forwatching the JS space report then I
would say see you next time and on 2 the future!