SpaceX’s “Big Crunch” with a Giant Rocket: A Challenge Trade-off for Human Expeditions to the Moon, Mars and Beyond
In South Texas, the commercial spaceflight company SpaceX is preparing to test a huge, stainless-steel rocket. The machine could one day carry humans to the moon, Mars and beyond.
Again, the decision to use such a large number of engines is a trade-off, according to Lozano. It helps the rocket get off the ground and produce huge amounts of thrust. But, he adds, “having that large number of rocket engines firing simultaneously – it’s actually quite hard. I think that is going to be one of the biggest challenges.
“As the sun expands, all life will die” Musk said, standing before the giant rocket about a year ago. “It is very important – essential in the long-term – that we become a multi-planet species.”
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SpaceX also has a business interest in seeing its mammoth rocket fly. Starship could be used to launch large numbers of the company’s internet-providing “Starlink” satellites. Starlink is seen as a key part of SpaceX’s future, and Starship would allow the network to rapidly grow, says Tim Farrar, the president of TMF associates, a telecom consulting firm.
The investors seem happy to have the chance to see the massive potential of the rocket. But he says that if the launch fails and Starship falls further behind schedule, it could affect all of SpaceX’s business, especially in the current financial climate.
The manufacturing of Starship is unusual in that it is made out of titanium, an unusual choice for a business where every pound of weight matters. In fact, SpaceX started out looking at advanced, lightweight composites for Starship, Musk told the Space Studies Board of the National Academies in 2021. He realized steel was cheap, plentiful, and incredibly tough. It could hold cryogenic rocket fuel and tolerate the grueling heat of re-entry better than other materials.
The rocket also uses an unconventional fuel choice – methane. Most high-powered rockets use hydrogen for fuel because it is lightweight and highly efficient, Lozano says.
But methane does have some advantages: It is cheaper to produce and easier to handle the hydrogen, and trace amounts of methane are present in the atmosphere of Mars. That means that a future Starship mission to the red planet might be able to refuel by drawing methane from the atmosphere or another local source.
SpaceX CEO Tim Musk and the Space Launch of the Spacecraft Booster for the Space Agency Mission Artemis III: Mission Expectations and Launch Plan
Raptors are powerful engines that make up for its extra weight. The booster that will lift the spaceship into space uses 33 engines, unlike the six Raptors used to fly it.
The Soviet Union attempted to get to the moon at the end of the 1960s. It was able to build a big rocket called the N1, which used 30 engines. However, even a single engine failure was enough to cause the rocket to explode, and four prototypes were destroyed before the Soviets eventually abandoned the program. America used five engines for the first stage of the rocket. The rocket could carry astronauts to the moon.
If everything goes according to Musk’s plan, he believes that the cheap, durable design of Starship will make it a workhorse for getting things into space. Musk said last year that he wanted the booster to be reuse every six to eight hours and that it could be done every hour.
The mission won’t be in the near term. Instead, SpaceX needs it to transport satellites into orbit for its satellite-based Internet service known as Starlink. Users have had strong interest in Starlink, which is a major revenue-maker. Tim said that Starlink is limited in how much it can support.
It could take thousands of additional satellites to build a system big enough to meet the demand. Smaller rockets can only fire a few dozen at a time. The company can use larger, heavier satellites to increase profitability.
SpaceX’s contract with NASA to use Starship for the space agency’s Artemis III moon landing later this decade leaves much of Starship’s development work to SpaceX. A $2.9 billion deal, inked in April 2021, was awarded to SpaceX over several competitors. It was later expanded to include a second lunar landing mission in 2027.
Just a few months after NASA put the world to its most powerful rocket ever flown to low-earth, Musk is about to launch his own rocket that could be nearly twice the power of anything flown before.
“I guess I’d like to just set expectations low,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during a Twitter “Spaces” event for his subscribers Sunday evening. If we can get far enough away from launch pad before something happens, I think it will be a success. Don’t blow the pad.
The inaugural flight test will not complete a full circle around Earth. It will travel about 150 miles above the Earth’s surface, to altitudes deemed to be outer space if it succeeds.
The booster is expected to be dumped into the ocean after three minutes after takeoff. The spaceship will have six engines that will take it for more than six minutes to propel itself.
The vehicle will complete a partial lap of the planet after returning to Earth. It’s expected to splash down off the coast about an hour and a half after liftoff.
The FAA Appeals to SpaceX for Preparing for the Space Launch of the Space-Based Booster, the Super-Heavy Rocket
Starship is the ultimate failure or success. It also underpins the United States government’s plans for human exploration and is crucial to its future as a company.
But it’s not all riding on this inaugural test flight. In the interest of refining the design of its vehicle, SpaceX has embraced mistakes and explosions.
The company’sFalcon Heavy rocket held the title of most powerful rocket before NASA’s SLS took to flight last year, but in the lead-up to the first launch, Musk only expected a 50% chance of success.
“People (came) from all around the world to see what will either be a great rocket launch or the best fireworks display they’ve ever seen,” Musk told CNN at the time.
The Super Heavy booster has been in the works for a while and has been getting ready for flight. The massive, 230-foot-tall (69-meter-tall) cylinder is packed with 33 of the company’s Raptor engines.
The company, and federal regulators tasked with certifying SpaceX launches won’t pose risks to people or property in the area surrounding the launch site, have faced significant pushback from the local community, including from environmental groups.
“After a comprehensive license evaluation process, the FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy, payload, airspace integration and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency said in a statement.
The official, who declined to be named for publication, told reporters that the FAA has been looking at the company’s compliance with the mitigated actions, even as they prepare for the launch.
NASA has been working over the past year to hash out a work flow between the space agency and SpaceX. It’s a dynamic the two organization have had to iron out in previous SpaceX-NASA projects, including an ongoing partnership that uses SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
NASA isn’t involved in planning the flight profile for this test flight, according to its associate program manager.
She added that humans would fly atop the rocket after one test flight next year, when Artemis II is slated for next year.
It’s not clear, however, if 2025 is feasible. The inspector general for NASA has said that it is not. The inspector general said in March, that delays could be related to Starship.
NASA’s current timeline targets 2025 for the first lunar landing mission, which will see astronauts transfer from their Orion capsule, which will launch atop a NASA Space Launch System rocket, and into a Starship spacecraft already in lunar orbit. The vehicle will ferry the crew to the moon.