SpaceX plans to be more ambitious with its point-to-point rocket landings.
Elon Musk’s company regularly recharges and reuses the first stages of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy Rocket, bringing down the booster. Soft ical landing too About 9 minutes after landing off the launch pad or on the autonomous “drone ship” at sea.
This touchdown is impressively accurate. But the goal of SpaceX is to achieve something with something really mind blowing Starship, The next pay generation system, is evolving to take people and payloads to the moon, Mars and other distant places.
Related: Starship of SpaceX and super heavy rocket in pictures
We will try to grab the super heavy booster by the hand of the load tower, using grid fins to carry the load.December 30, 2020
“We will try to grab the super heavy booster by the hand of the loading tower, using grid fins to carry the load.” Said via Twitter on December 30th.
That’s right: SpaceX, the first phase of the super-heavy, two-stage starship system, wants to bring it directly to the launching stand.
There is musk This ambition was voiced before, But new wrinkles have been added to last week’s tweet – for example, Super Heavy will ideally hold the tower by the hand, so its touchdown won’t really land in the landings. Unlike the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy first stage, then, the Super Heavy will not need landing legs. (Catch-abilging grids have control surfaces like fins, way, waffle that help the rocket to operate during certain touchdowns.)
The newly announced strategy offers many important benefits, Musk said.
“Saves leg mass and cost and enables immediate relocation of the booster to the launching mount – ready to be trusted within an hour,” he said. 30 December.
The Upper Stage of the Starship is a 165-foot tall (50 m) spacecraft called a (somewhat confusingly) Starship. While both Starship and Super Heavy will be fully and quickly reusable, Kasturi has emphatically made Mars colonization and other ambitious research economically possible.
SpaceX has built and flown several Starship prototypes from its South Texas facility, near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chika. Last month, for example, the SN8 (“Serial No. 8”) vehicle climbed an estimated 8 altitudes of 7.8 miles (12.5 kilometers) and returned to Earth at the designated location. Although the SN8 came very quickly and exploded in a huge fireball, Kasturi revealed this Epic test flight Great success.
Another such leap should come soon: SpaceX recently moved the SN9 to the launch stand. Like the SN8, the SN9 sports three powerful Raptor engines, so its maximum alt altitude can be in the range of 7.8-miles. (The three prototypes flying before SN8 were single-engine vehicles that were only 500 feet or 150 m above the ground.
The final Starship vehicle will have six Raptors, making it powerful enough to launch itself from the surface of the Moon and Mars (but not Earth). The super heavy will have about 30 raptors, Musk said. Although the Starship program devotes most of its time to building and testing spaceship prototypes, it appears Construction of the first super heavy prototype is now underway.
Mike is the author of “Wall L”Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the discovery of alien life. Follow him on Twitter ઇકMikeHeldVall. Follow us on Twitter @speedotcom or Facebook.
