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SpaceX’s recently announced Moon Starship is a pretty radical departure from the fully Mars-centric reusable vehicle the company has been looking for for years. Without intuition, that may be the perfect half-step toward truly reusable Mars rockets.
On April 30, NASA announced that SpaceX had won $ 135 million to design and build a highly customized variant of its reusable Starship spacecraft with the intention of launching a handful of space agency astronauts to the Moon in the mid-decade. 2020. Whether or not that initial seed translates into sufficient funds to seriously design and build the spacecraft SpaceX has demonstrated in new renders, it has already broken the ice, so to speak, among the US federal government. USA (Or at least NASA) and the company’s ambitious next-generation launch vehicle.
With a substantial amount of money now on the table for SpaceX to begin initial work on its Moon Starship, it’s worth analyzing how different it is from the Starship the company is working on today.
First off, perhaps the most obvious difference between SpaceX’s ‘base’ spacecraft and its lunar variant is the rocket’s hull. In the case of the Moonbound spacecraft, SpaceX appears to have returned to a fully painted vehicle for unknown reasons. Chances are, that white paint is motivated by the fact that the proposed NASA lunar landers must (obviously) be able to land and safely returning their astronaut cargo to lunar orbit.
To do that, those landers must be able to sit on the Moon’s surface after landing for at least several days, and longer stays are even better. For Starship, this means that the vehicle should probably be able to prevent its cryogenic methane and oxygen booster liquid from heating up and turning into gas, thus preventing it from starting its Raptor main engines. White paint is at least a little more reflective (and therefore insulating) compared to Starship’s glossy steel hull, but it could also hint at using more extensive insulation and then sealing it with paint.
This is perhaps related to the most significant functional change in the rocket. While visible in a render of the spacecraft after landing on the Moon, a separate render just before landing fully revealed not only the addition of vacuum-optimized large retrotrusters, but a major strategic change in how the Mooncraft will attempt land on the moon.
In short, it appears that SpaceX does not plan to propelled the lunar ship to the Moon under the power of its main Raptor engines. Instead, three triple-helix clusters, likely relying on the same methane and oxygen booster as Raptor, will fire shortly before landing to land softly on the starship on the Moon. This approach has significant benefits: the Moon’s gravity is so low (~ 1/8 of Earth) that using just such a powerful engine as the Raptor to land would be incredibly difficult: a single engine could theoretically lift a starship completely powered by low lunar gravity
Furthermore, the powerful Raptor engines, even if they could be used to land, would likely dig huge craters into the moon’s dusty surface during a landing burn, making it difficult for astronauts to leave the ship to explore their surroundings. However, it also means that SpaceX must design and certify a completely new type of vacuum-optimized rocket engine, likely using gas thruster and powered by high-pressure tanks, for an extremely critical part of operations. If those landing engines failed, the spacecraft would likely crash on the Moon, be isolated, injured, or even doom astronauts aboard.
Beyond the new thrusters, a radically different landing strategy, and a painted (and possibly insulated) steel hull, Lunar Starship also features what looks like the tip of a Crew Dragon spacecraft instead of its nose, likely including Draco thrusters. and a docking port. SpaceX has also copied the concept of the Crew Dragon’s trunk section, installing a curved solar array that wraps around a large portion of Starship’s tapered nose. Lunar Starship also offers what appears to be the first official glimpse of a new style of Starship landing pads, the prototypes of which are already installed on Starship SN4.
Simplicity first (ish)
Additionally, SpaceX has chosen to completely exclude a windward heat shield from Lunar Starship, as NASA’s plan is (quite painful) to launch astronauts to the Moon with SLS and take them to lunar orbit and back to Earth in Orion. . Starship also seems to be lacking its complex and sprawling room module and huge gallery window. All of that missing hardware is almost certainly meant to dramatically simplify the spacecraft to the point that even NASA would consider funding its development. Unbelievably, that strategy seems to have worked and we may be able to see lunar spacecraft flying towards the Moon as early as 2022.
While a moon stop is decidedly one-way and requires a bit of a unique Starship variant, what SpaceX has really done is find a way to get NASA to help fund the development of its next-generation launch system entirely. reusable. Even if NASA’s Artemis program dies, wobbles, or goes nowhere, SpaceX will likely benefit significantly, in the same way that NASA’s assistance in developing Cargo Dragon and Falcon 9 was a great blessing to the company.
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