[Part 1] Starship's Critical Engineering Challenges - Methane Recapture & Raptor 2 Startup

It's awesome how much you've stepped it up with every video. Keep it up.

And thanks for playing along @Everyday Astronaut!!!

Wow. You just came up in my feed. An hour about a launch stand? I'll watch a couple of minutes, but it's probably just padding for watch time and stuff I already knew. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time! This is absolutely awesome. Like a deluge but info instead of water. I'm going to watch the whole thing again tomorrow as it was so packed I think I missed some of it. Thanks so much.

42:16 Can we pause for a moment and pay our respects to this man who pulls the entire booster into place with just the power of his body.

I loved the interrogation of the shifty and elusive Tim Dodd. This vid was as informative and entertaining as anything I've seen yet.

The amount of technical detail that you can pull from relatively few images is incredible. I've got no engineering background so all of this is basically black magic to me.

🤩 Let's train that algorithm!

Thanks Zach. Amazingly detailed. I especially enjoyed the step by step walk-through of the line-cooling before fueling.

Dude, this is amazing. You earned a sub. Keep up the good work!

Theory about all those vent lines going to the engines: 1. It's obviously temporary. No way will they stay connected like that before an actual launch! 2. SpaceX does rapid iteration. They will take short term steps to accomplishe longer term goals. 3. They don't really know how much vented methane there really is so lets find out by capturing 100% of it that might come out of 33 engines and measure it. 4. Now that this is known, they know whether it is worth capturing that vented methane or simply letting it escape. If it's a lot (6 tons or so), capture it and feed it back into the center 10 engines. If its a little let it vent away and burn off. 5. If it's a lot of methane, then you need a re-circulation manifold above the tops of the 33 engines that puts that methane back into the center 10 engines. This is extra parts/weight that they are trying to avoid having, but probably need to have. * In the end the temp solution with the hoses and pipes is just that and will go away soon. It was needed to measure the vented methane accurately. It may be that the recirc manifold feeds back the QD, but I doubt it. More likely it will feed back to the center 10 engines. * Now that I've seen this video to the end, I'm curious what your idea is and why you think SpaceX is afraid of it. Another great deep dive! Still skipping over the story time parts...

Zach's videos are PHENOMENAL!!!!

I'm a rocket lover and SpaceX addict but don't know too much about how it. You learn me too much. That's why I subscribe to you channel. Nice job.

This is beyond TV level production and the info is about as deep as I imagine you can get without actually attending Starbase morning meetings. Much appreciated!

i always heard handling cryo propellant is difficult but wow, never knew it was this complex. great video!

Usually I'll doze off several times in a 1+ hr video but only once for this one. Nice job. Very interesting analysis. Venting will be a lot less mysterious for me in the future, thanks Zac.

Zack, you are a natural born story teller, this is incredible. Congrats, your hard work shows

Amazing production. Thank you for your efforts to help us understand what you're seeing.

This is a level of detail broken down into digestible chunks unparalleled. Thank you.

Loved the VR of the flow in the GSE, that was so informative! Also laughed my ass off with the Tim Dodd section 😂 Can't wait for part 2!

Impressive. Very informative comments. Looking forward to Part 2!