SpaceX’s latest Starship The prototype, which fired its engines for the fourth time on Tuesday evening (November 24) evening, kept the vehicle on track for a landmark test flight next week.
Starship S.N. The 8th prototype conducted its fourth “static fire” test at 6:23 a.m. EST (2323 GMT) Tuesday at SpaceX’s South Texas facility near the coastal village of Boka Choka.
A stationary fire, in which the engines briefly ignite while the vehicle remains bolted to the ground, is a common preflight checkout for a SpaceX rocket. And S.N. 8 (“Serial Number 8”) is actually preparing for flight – a test that will take it to an itude of 9 miles (15 kilometers), which is higher than any other Starship prototype.
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Good Starship SN8 static fire! Aim for the first 15km / ~ 50k ft alt altitude flight next week. The goal is to test the transition from 3 engine accents, flade flaps, header tanks to the main, and landing flip.November 24, 2020
Tuesday’s exam aims to target the SN8, the milestone leap, founder and CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk Said.
“Good Starship SN8 Static Fire! Aims for the first 15km / ~ 50k ft alt altitude flight next week. Testing the transition from 3-engine ascent, body flips, head to head tank and landing flip.” Mastak tweeted Tuesday evening, About 45 minutes after the test.
Starship is SpaceX’s next pay generation space transport system, the company is developing to carry people and payloads to Mars and the Moon, launch satellites into orbit and do everything else SpaceX needs to do.
The final version will feature a 165-foot tall (50 m) spacecraft, a giant rocket named Starship and a super heavy, both of which will be fully reusable. Starship and Super Heavy will be powered by SpaceX’s new Raptor engine, which burns liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Starship will play a game of six Raptors, and Super Heavy will have about 30 engines, Musk said.
The first super heavy prototype has not yet been built. But SpaceX has built and tested many Starship test vehicles, three of which have already taken off. A fanatical craft called the StarHopper flew in the summer of 2019, and the SN5 and SN6 landed this past August and September, respectively.
All three prototypes were single-engine crafts, and they reached a maximum height of about 500 feet (150 m). The SN8 will go much higher and so it is quite different from its predecessors, boasting three raptors as well as a nasal cone and stabilizing the body straps.
Starhopper, SN5 and SN6 supported their short test flights. Musk S.N. 8 is not giving great obstacles to doing the same, though he said it would not be a disaster if the vehicle crashed and burned.
“A lot of things need to go right, so maybe a 1/3 chance.” Tweeted Tuesday evening. “But that’s why we have SN9 and SN10,” he added Another tweet.
S.N. The three fires before 8 a.m. occurred on October 20. 10 Nov. And Nov. 12. The third test did not go as planned; Ignition of the raptors, disintegrates the top surface of the test pad, sending the material shards into the bay of the engine and causing a premature shutdown, musk Explained in a tweet last week.
But the SN8 bounced back quickly, and will soon fly high if it goes as planned.
Mike is the author of “Wall L”Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the quest for alien life. Follow him on Twitter ઇકMikeHeldVall. Follow us on Twitter @speedotcom or Facebook.
