Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On April 17, SpaceX plans to conduct a launch test on Monday morning EDT, the first attempt to ignite the entire starship system. If all goes well, this will bring a whole new way for human beings to explore space.

Last Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a launch license to SpaceX. The starship system has a two-and-a-half-hour launch window starting at 8 a.m. eastern time on Monday (8 p.m. Beijing time on Monday), SpaceX said. If the day's launch is delayed for some reason, there will be other launch opportunities in the next few days.

The super heavy booster and the top starship are stacked nearly 400 feet (121 meters) together, carrying 33 engines alone. Bill Nelson (Bill Nelson), director of NASA, likes to brag about his giant lunar rocket space launch system (SLS). But the starship system has almost twice as much thrust as the SLS rocket; and NASA's SLS rocket crashes into the sea after launching a payload, but the starship system is designed to return to the ground after launch and then use it again.

If SLS represents the traditional method of rocket design, then the starship system is a symbol of modern space flight. Starships are designed to have the ability to refuel in orbit, which allows SpaceX to send large amounts of cargo and dozens of people into distant space. And starships are reusable and are expected to cost much less than SLS.

The launch will be SpaceX's first attempt to launch the entire starship system, including both super-heavy booster and top starship. Considering the size and complexity of the overall system, a successful launch will be a feat. "the measure of success in this test is how much we can learn from it," SpaceX said in a statement. "in the process of SpaceX's rapid progress in starship development, this test will provide more information and improve the probability of success in the future."

Speaking at a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley last month, Mr Musk said there was a 50 per cent chance of a successful first launch. "I'm not saying it's going to be in orbit, but I'm sure it's going to be great," Musk said. "it won't be boring."

If the flight is successful this time, the starship system can be used not only as an exploration tool, but also as a scientific research tool. Because the giant rocket can put massive objects into orbit, astronomers and astrophysicists begin to rethink what kind of telescopes and instruments can be launched with it.

According to a user guide released by SpaceX in 2020, starship systems will be able to send more than 100 tons of cargo to the moon and more to low-Earth orbit on the premise that it is fully reusable.

According to NASA, the SLS rocket can currently send a 27-ton payload to the moon. Even after the upgrade, the capacity of the SLS rocket to deliver a payload to the moon can only be increased to 38 tons.

In an article published in Physics Today (Physics Today), three astronomers and physicists predicted: "assuming success, the starship system will greatly enhance our ability to explore space and essentially change the structure of astrophysical missions."... space astrophysical missions have been severely restricted by launch capabilities and have not changed substantially in 20 years. "

"Starship systems can accommodate much larger and heavier payloads than traditional NASA planetary loads, and the need for traditional NASA loads to minimize the size and mass of payloads because of launch costs will be greatly reduced," said a report by the National School of Science, Engineering and Medical College (NASEM) last year.

"it's really much easier. When you design any mission for astronomy, you are limited by the available mass of the rocket," Martin Martin Elvis, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard and the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in an interview. For example, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope must be designed to be foldable to fit into the nose cone of the Ariana 5 rocket and into space. And the total mass of the Webb Space Telescope is less than 14000 pounds, far less than the load of the starship system.

"your whole development process, your whole design process, will be very simple," Elvis said. "it will save a lot of money."

In fact, there is so much cargo space for starships that it may take some time for the space industry to adapt.

"Starship systems are too large for most current payloads," said Carissa Christensen, chief executive of consulting firm Bryce Space and Technology. But if the launch price is cheap enough, it may not matter. In the short term, starships can directly replace poor performance rockets. The real impact will be how to take advantage of the new concept of huge capacity, and it will take years for the market to design and manufacture payloads optimized for starships. "

The commitment to the design of the starship system and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's assertion that the starship system will make it a reality for humans to colonize Mars have attracted a large following. For years, they have been listening to Musk give lectures on giant rockets, obsessed with tracking starship design iterations, and visiting SpaceX's starship base in the remote south of Texas.

The starship system has also won the support of NASA, which has become the core equipment of the lunar exploration project. In 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to develop a vehicle that would allow astronauts to land smoothly on the lunar surface, an important part of Artemis's lunar landing program.

And some customers have booked flights for starships. Japanese billionaire Yuzawa Maezawa has booked a trip around the moon with several other ordinary people. Another billionaire, Jared Isaacman (Jared Isaacman), who went into orbit on SpaceX's manned dragon ship in 2021, also plans to fly with people on a starship mission. However, it is not clear when the two men plan to take off on a starship.

In the near future, SpaceX needs to use regular starships to put a new generation of "star chain" Internet satellites into orbit. These new satellites are more powerful than those currently launched in bulk by the Falcon 9 rocket. But Musk says the new satellite is much heavier, at 1.25 tons, and requires more powerful rockets.

But first, SpaceX needs a successful launch.

During earlier testing activities, a number of SpaceX starship prototypes exploded. There are also prototypes of the spacecraft that rose 10 kilometers above the ground, but exploded while trying to land. Fortunately, SpaceX finally achieved a successful landing after the launch of the starship in the test.

Last year, SpaceX's plan to launch a starship system for the first time was initially approved by FAA. The Authority asked SpaceX to take action to protect the environment and reduce the impact of launch activities on nearby public beaches and wildlife reserves before obtaining a launch permit.

The launch test on Monday was much larger than before. The starship will lift off on superheavy boosters with 33 Raptor engines, fly at high speed in most parts of the world, and then pass through the atmosphere and crash into the ocean off the coast of Hawaii.

Mr Musk said that if the launch failed, SpaceX would soon try again. "We are building a number of starships in southern Texas, so I think we have an 80 per cent chance of getting into orbit this year."

In this test, SpaceX will not try to land a starship or a super heavy booster. In the end, SpaceX hopes the booster will return to the tower and be held firmly by the robotic arm.

After completing the mission and re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, the starship itself will flip to the horizontal flight attitude and fall to the ground, restore the vertical attitude as it approaches the ground, reignite the engine, and then land on the landing platform. SpaceX said the technology would allow starship systems to "carry out missions in destinations where there is no runway in the solar system."

Musk said that once put into use, starships can "reduce the cost of going into space by several orders of magnitude", enabling people to go to Mars and eventually achieve the goal of becoming a "multi-planetary species."

"We don't want to be a lousy single-planet civilization," Musk said.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.