SpaceX warned observers before the test against high expectations, and so the explosion after a few minutes of normal flight is unlikely to be considered a failure. At least Musk himself discretion 50% success rate. The official SpaceX Twitter account is for prank purposes. judicial “rapid unplanned disassembly” boom. Also, the first stage of a Starship (Super Heavy) that had previously only passed static fire tests has been removed from the table for the first time.
This flight for the second stage was the first in a hiatus of nearly two years – previous flight tests were conducted in May 2021, when it flew up to 10 kilometers without a Super Heavy, descended back and landed softly.
That’s the key to the Starship project – the second stage refundable -. Almost all modern reusable rockets are based on a similar concept: a large first stage is used to bring the second, smaller one into the upper atmosphere, after which disassembly is carried out. Then the lower stage returns to Earth: either with rocket engines like Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 or with a winged plane-like aircraft used by the Russians. project “Baikal”, or later with a parachute taken by a hovering helicopter – such experiments carried out Creators of the ultralight rocket Electron. The upper stage with this flight pattern accelerates the payload to orbital speed, then unfolds and burns in the atmosphere.
Starship flight will take place, as conceived by Elon Musk and SpaceX engineers definitely not this way. Its upper stage is also a spacecraft and will be equipped with either cockpits or a cargo launch device where the nose cone will likely open. After the payload is released, the upper stage ship will slow down, enter the atmosphere and decelerate due to aerodynamic braking. Ceramic tiles on one of the sides of the fuselage should protect the rocket from high temperatures – similar to the Space Shuttle are installed.
Heat-protecting tiles are installed asymmetrically, not by chance, but only on one side. When descending in an atmosphere, the Starship must fly sideways, maximizing aerodynamic drag to reduce speed. The rocket is controlled by four aerodynamic rudders, two above and two below. At a height of several kilometers, when the orbital velocity has already deflated, the Starship starts the engines and takes a turn with the engines down. After that, three (or less, depending on the payload) thrusters ensure a smooth landing on the tail of the rocket – similar to the Falcon 9 and Super Heavy stage. After landing, the Starship’s upper stage must be rebuilt into the lower one.
Therefore, the new rocket should be like an airplane – fly, land, refuel and fly again. according to the optimist evaluation Elon Musk, the price of a launch under such a plan will be approximately equal to one million dollars. For comparison, the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket costs the customer about 50-60 million dollars, but in the return version it can put into low Earth orbit only 17 tons, and Starship (under the project) – more. 100 tons.
But Starship was not named because of its ability to lower the cost of launching satellites. Its reusable upper stage should allow it to uniquely send interplanetary missions by refueling in orbit. In Musk’s idea, a cargo or passenger ship flying to the Moon or another planet would first have to enter Earth orbit. In this case, the rocket will develop almost all the fuel and will not even reach the moon on its own. Therefore, some of the Starship upper stages will be equipped as tankers, so that they can dock and pump fuel into an interplanetary ship after launching into the same orbit. The reusable tanker will be able to repeat the operation several times, after which the tanks of the main rocket will be refilled and go to the Moon, Mars, Venus and possibly Saturn and Jupiter.
This feature of Starship is key to Elon Musk’s idea of transporting humans to Mars and establishing a large colony there. Many experts are skeptical of these plans, especially given the announced deadlines – a businessman in 2017. planned Manned landing on Mars in 2024.
However, according to NASA, such an interplanetary flight plan is not a wild fantasy at all. The Artemis program calls for the United States to land humans on the moon by 2026 and establish a permanent base there by the end of the 2020s. It was Starship selected as a landing stage and will have to deliver the astronauts from the moon base to the surface. According to the preliminary design, this version of the ship will not have a heat shield and aerodynamic rudders, as there is no atmosphere on the Moon and is not expected to return to Earth.
The Starship design includes the unique re-entry stage layout as well as many other innovations. Yes, her body complete stainless steel, the main building material of modern rockets is aluminum. Steel is not only cheaper than aluminum, but also retains its strength at high temperatures of up to 800 degrees. This is especially important for a spacecraft as it exits orbit in the atmosphere.
The lower stage of the Super Heavy has 33 Raptor engines. This is a world record previously held by the failed Soviet H1 rocket of the 1960s and 1970s with 30 engines. The H1 was part of the Soviet lunar program and was supposed to send cosmonauts to the moon, but all copies of it were destroyed during test launches. Too many engines doomed the project, according to some experts, but Elon Musk declarationthat modern technology can solve this problem.
Also, Raptor engines use methane as fuel, which is more efficient than kerosene and more convenient than hydrogen. Also thanks to the use of methane Raptor Works according to the scheme of complete gasification of components, in which the fuel and oxidizer pass through two different gas generators. This scheme allows you to significantly increase the pressure in the combustion chamber, which increases the efficiency of the engine and its specific thrust.
How declaration The next Starship flight test should take place in the coming months, Musk said on Twitter. SpaceX will need to repeatedly prove the Starship’s reliability through a series of tests before NASA can confirm the landing of humans on the moon with this rocket.