SpaceX targets Tuesday for first hop test and Windbarrier almost done. Mask again states that Starship will fly by the end of the year and Cocoa Florida aerial footage showing the progress. Virgin Orbit does a drop test of its two-stage air-launch rocket and CRS-18 ready for July launch, and NASA gets SLS parts ready and replaces head of human spaceflight program. My name is Felix and I am your host for today's episode of What About It. There has been a lot going on in the space industry lately, so let's dive right in. SpaceX targeting Tuesday for first hopper hover tests. So this is it, the news with Alden waiting for. Over the past few months, SpaceX's progress at the Boca Chica construction site has been delayed over and over again. The reason? The famous new engine SpaceX has been developing. Raptor. Raptor was not working as intended, it had a 600Hz vibration problem which caused the engine to take damage while testing. SpaceX had to redesign and change some parts to get rid of these vibrations. Right now though, it seems like they've overcome these problems. Maria Pointer was first on site to film the mysterious black truck that delivered Raptor S-N06 from SpaceX's test facility in McGregor, Texas to the hopper site in Boca Chica. Then everything went really quick, Elon tweeted that Raptor is on site and that he's planning first tests for Tuesday. He said that the first hop will be 20m up and that there will be siteway movement involved as well. So basically, SpaceX will of course be testing everything on the hopper, but especially the thrust vector control and the reaction control twisters. The construction crew has been hard at work ever since Raptor arrived. Numerous tasks had to be performed even though the fitting tests had been done in April. Now that the Raptor has been installed, first hopper tests can commence. A Notem has already been filed for Boca Chica airspace for July 15-17. Notems are internally communicated short notices of important change for pilots, but they can also be a really good source of information for rocket enthusiasts as the FAA is really quick in distributing them to the public. SpaceX always work with UTC or Universal Time coordinated. Texas is Central Daylight Time which is UTC-5. So the airspace around the hopper tests will be closed from Tuesday to Thursday between 2pm and 6pm local time. So expect the first hopper test to be on Tuesday between 2pm and 6pm local time. With additional possible test windows at the same time on Wednesday and Thursday. Also again, Musk stated on Twitter that SpaceX's internal schedule has Starship on track for the first flight within the next 5 months to a height of up to 20km. There will be lots more testing this year if nothing goes wrong with the hopper test program. So let's cross our fingers and hope for success. Rapid progress is made in Florida. Also, in Cocoa Florida construction is making rapid progress. It literally looks like an ant nest. Very busy and loads of things going on. If SpaceX wants to stay true to their schedule of making Starship go up to 20km this year, they'll have to keep this pace going forward. CRS-18 getting ready. The next Falcon 9 launch is around the corner. After CRS-17 and Cargo Dragon did the last resupply to the ISS in early May and what about it did not yet exist at the time, this will be the first CRS mission covered by me. And I am very excited about it. Besides the usual toilet paper and chewing gum delivery to our brave astronauts at the ISS, CRS-18 will pave the way further for NASA's recently announced plans to open up the ISS to the private sector. If you have more customers, you need a bigger parking lot. CRS-18 will carry a new international docking adapter, adding the second IDA to the ISS. This will enable the station to have more vehicles docked at the same time. Also, CRS-18 will carry a microgravity tissue printer system to test the ability of printing organic tissue in space. It's a long-term effort to see if human organs can be printed in space. That could be very useful for future deep space missions or eventually bases on moon and Mars, to treat series injuries without a proper donor. CRS-18 is scheduled to launch at 7.35 pm Eastern time from Pat 39A at Cape Canaveral. Virgin Orbit does a drop test of their two-stage air-launched rocket. Air-launched rockets are a bit of a strange thing if you add up the numbers as the extra effort should in theory not be worth it. The extra delta V gained is minimal. Still, Virgin Orbit, not to be confused with Virgin Galactic and their tourist stasha, both backed by Richard Branson, is pursuing exactly that. A two-stage air-launched orbital rocket. And as you can see in the video, Virgin Orbit means business. On Wednesday morning of last week, the dedicated launch plane, a modified Boeing 747, took off giving a strange picture to anyone living near Mojave Desert in the United States. When was the last time you saw a huge rocket hanging under the wing of a jumbo jet? Most viewers now might ask themselves why this is so spectacular. Doesn't look that impressive, does it? That's simply because a 747 is a really bad reference when it comes to size. That plane is enormous. This makes the rocket called Launcher 1 look like it's not a big deal. Launcher 1 is big enough so you could almost stand in its body if it was laying horizontally. It has a diameter of 1.6 meters for the first stage, so that's not a small rocket at all. Its payload capacity to a 230 km sun-synchronous orbit is 500 kg. Its first stage, Carousine Locks Engine, has a thrust output of 33.5 tons. I hope that brought it into perspective. Scheduled for its first orbital flight this year, Launcher 1 is not far into the future. IFA 1 and very curious if such a concept can get market share. Good luck, Virgin Orbit. NASA gets SLS parts ready for testing and replaces head of human spaceflight program. NASA is in crunch mode for SLS as it seems right now. There are news about it almost every week. With the recent delivery of the last structural test article, the Liquid Oxygen Tank, to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the start of testing in June of the largest test article, the 49 meters tall Liquid Hydrogen Tank, NASA is halfway through SLS structural testing. The nearly 22 meter long Liquid Oxygen Tank Structural Test article was manufactured at NASA's Mischu'd Assembly Facility in New Orleans. And it will be tested at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. In a recent episode, we already took a look at NASA's successful in flight aboard test for the now finished Orion capsule. On March 26, during the fifth meeting of the Reestablished National Space Council, Vice President Mike Pence challenged NASA to land a man on the moon within the next five years. This represented an order to expedite space policy directive 1 signed by President Trump on December 11th of 2017, which directed NASA to take all the necessary steps to send astronauts back to the moon. And NASA seems to be determined to make these orders a reality. In a very surprising announcement, Bill Gerson-Meier, former head of human explorations and operations at NASA got reassigned to the position of an advisor. But what about it? Why did NASA decide to retire Gerson-Meier at such a crucial time? Gerson-Meier has been head of human exploration since the position was established in 2011. He also started his career at NASA in 1977. He's been with NASA for a long time. Brightonstein insists that the reassignment had nothing to do with Gerson-Meier's performance and that he paved the way for the moon 2024 schedule. The reason he said was that new leadership was needed to get NASA on the changing path to meet public and congress expectations in the future. So this wraps up today's episode of What About It. Will the hopper tests be delayed again and what about NASA? Is it a good or a bad decision to get rid of old leaders for new ones? As always, tell me in the comments. Now here comes the part that I always love doing the most. Thank you to my new patrons, Joshua Phillips, Tom Campbell, and again, Dorio Enbe. Thank you for watching this episode of What About It. If you liked what you saw, don't forget to subscribe and like as this helps me the most. Feel free to hit me up on my Patreon page so I can get additional help in making more and better content. As this gives me more time to focus on what I love doing the most to give you the latest and greatest about space and science. I hope to see you on the next episode. Until then, have a great time. To a height of up to 5. Cape Canaveral Virgin Optics Virgin Optics AHHHHH Two-stage drop test No! Entrepreneur Okay, entrepreneur The Harvey Mojave So that's what you call it. Orbital flight Orbital flight