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

On the morning of April 21, Beijing time, it is reported that SpaceX, a space exploration technology company owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Elon Musk), told the world at a painful price: how far is space travel from us? And what kind of risks may exist?

After a delayed launch on Monday, SpaceX's Starship super-heavy rocket was launched last night from the SpaceX proving ground outside Brownsville, Texas, for its first orbital flight test to help NASA return to the nearest object after more than 50 years away from the moon.

Unfortunately, the Starship exploded four minutes after launch. This shows that there is still a long way to go to realize Musk's greatest ambition, that is, to send man to the moon or even Mars. After the failed launch, Musk said on Twitter that the next launch could be months away.

For now, SpaceX engineers are still trying to figure out what went wrong with Starship. During the climb, several of the starship's 33 Raptor engines seemed to catch fire. Within three minutes of launch, the super-heavy booster was supposed to separate, but it backfired. The starship began to spin frantically, rolling in the sky. Subsequently, the carrier rocket exploded. SpaceX later said the explosion was triggered "intentionally" and that the crew sent orders to the rockets and booster to stop the flight.

Although the test launch ended early, SpaceX scored some major victories, the first time the booster actually flew in the air. The Starship's booster is a huge cylindrical fuel tank with the propellant needed to escape the earth's gravity. In addition, SpaceX has collected some valuable flight data to help with the next flight test.

After the Starship explosion, Musk said on Twitter: "Congratulations to the SpaceX team for an exciting test launch. They have learned a lot from it and will help with the next launch in a few months' time." In fact, the first launch of a commercial rocket was rarely a complete success, and SpaceX's own first rocket, Falcon 1, went through three failures before it finally got into orbit in its fourth attempt.

But this time the Starship's capsule could not be successfully separated from the booster (the first step to the moon), highlighting the challenges Musk faces in his ambitious plan to provide space travel through the Starship. And its ultimate goal is to send humans and goods to the moon and beyond. This may take years, or even billions of dollars, because Starship still needs to make unprecedented progress in engineering.

For manned flights, SpaceX needs to prove that starships can return to Earth and land intact. In addition, the company needs to develop a life support system that can provide oxygen, water and everything else that human beings need to survive. Perhaps the biggest challenge is figuring out how to refuel starships in outer space, a feat that will involve launching gas stations in the universe into orbit, sending a fleet of tankers to deliver chemical propellant, and then finding an effective way to transfer fuel to the starship in microgravity.

None of this is easy, but Mr Musk says starships are reusable and can fly multiple times, thus greatly reducing the cost of entering orbit and providing a reliable route to deep space.

The US government has invested a lot of money to ensure the success of SpaceX. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has pledged at least $2.9 billion (currently about 19.952 billion yuan) to help SpaceX develop starships to send NASA astronauts to the moon. It is also part of NASA's Artemis moon landing program to send astronauts safely to the moon and return around 2024, establishing a regular residence mechanism. In addition, Starship is destined to be a key participant in SpaceX's ultimate goal: landing in a nearby solar system, such as Mars, and providing commercial space services.

Bill Bill Nelson, director of NASA, said after last night's launch: "Congratulations to SpaceX's starship on its first comprehensive flight test. Every great achievement in history is accompanied by a certain degree of risk. The length of a great risk is a great reward."

What Starship will do next is also a test for Musk himself. Musk is famous for turning Tesla into the world's largest electric car maker, making him one of the richest men in the world. But recently, his reputation has been tarnished by the chaotic acquisition of Twitter and the subsequent surge in hate speech and other unpleasant content on the platform, alienating some of his former supporters.

But by making SpaceX the most frequent rocket launch service in the United States and the only American company capable of sending astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), Musk has proved that he can surpass his peers in the industry, including Richard Branson of Virgin Orbital and Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin. Therefore, ensuring the success of the starship is a test for Musk himself. "SpaceX is the agent of change in the entire space industry, and Starship has the opportunity to rewrite the launch story," said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Analytics, a space consulting service.

It is difficult to estimate the cost of development. SpaceX has achieved incredible success with its Falcon 9 main rocket, which is used to launch satellites, cargo and people into space. But this time the starship is SpaceX's first attempt to launch a super-heavy carrier rocket that could one day send humans to other planets. In addition, the Starship is designed to be completely reusable, while only part of the Falcon 9 rocket can return to Earth after launch.

It is hard to calculate how much money SpaceX has invested in Starship and how much more it may have to invest to fulfill its ambitions. Musk has not updated his forecast for total development costs of no more than $10 billion in 2018, and SpaceX has not publicly released any relevant financial information. Musk did not answer directly on Monday when asked how much SpaceX had spent on the development of the Starship.

"Price doesn't really matter," Musk said at the time. "if you have a soap factory, how much does the first bar of soap cost? if it's $10 million, but that's not the actual cost of a bar of soap. Because what matters is how much it costs in mass production." Musk also said his goal is to reduce the cost per flight to $2 million (currently about 13.76 million yuan).

It is not clear when SpaceX's investment will pay off. NASA has said its goal is to use starships to put a man on the moon by 2025, and some wealthy tourists have paid deposits for travel around the moon. SpaceX has missed Starship's schedule many times before. According to the original plan, the first passenger flight was supposed to take place as early as this year, but now it seems unlikely. SpaceX has not commented on this.

Once the Starship proves it can go into orbit, SpaceX plans to use it as the main vehicle for sending everything into space. This will start with SpaceX's next generation of larger "chain" satellites, which are designed to expand SpaceX's space Internet.

In order for humans to explore space, including the moon, Mars and eventually return to Earth, SpaceX needs to find a way to refuel the starship after it goes into orbit.

A defining feature of Starship is its mass: it is almost 400ft tall from top to bottom, more than twice the size of previous NASA space shuttles. Starship is expected to be the most powerful rocket in human space history, but it also means that it will gobble up large amounts of propellant just to get into orbit. Moreover, it needs more energy to break the earth's gravity, go to the moon and return.

As a result, Starship travel will require a stopover, just as cars have to refuel at a gas station. However, it is unprecedented for a rocket of this size to refuel in microgravity. Especially for the cryogenic propellant currently used in rockets, it is full of challenges.

In this regard, the research and development of SpaceX is still in its early stages. The company also acknowledges that this will be a difficult obstacle. Gwynne Shotwell, chief operating officer of SpaceX, told an industry conference in Washington in February: "putting this behemoth on track is a challenge in itself and will continue for some time until we complete it. Then, from a technical point of view, refueling could be the next big challenge."

In order to fuel the starship during the journey, SpaceX envisioned the construction of three different types of spacecraft. The first one will be used to store the propellant, which will be launched and parked in low-Earth orbit. Then there is a tanker, which will transport the propellant to the warehouse. SpaceX may need more than a dozen tankers to transport enough propellant to and from the moon, but NASA and SpaceX have not released exact numbers.

Once the starship's fuel depot is full enough, a third type of spacecraft can be launched: manned spacecraft. It needs to be equipped with a cabin for crew and passengers, as well as a life support system. The starship will dock with the fuel depot, filling up the fuel tank for the long journey ahead.

Filling a starship with cryogenic propellant is not as simple as refueling a car. Starship's fuel consists of two extremely cold propellants: liquid oxygen and liquid methane. They must be kept at minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit to keep the liquid and function as needed. If they get too hot, they turn into gases and boil.

And the space environment is not easy to keep the propellant cool. When the warehouse moves around the earth, half its time will be spent in cold darkness, while the other half will be spent in direct sunlight. Therefore, the interior of the spaceship warehouse needs proper insulation, the outside needs shielding, and cooling is needed to withstand high temperatures. To avoid potentially catastrophic pressure accumulation, strong valves are also needed to discharge boiling propellants.

In addition, SpaceX needs to transfer these extremely cold liquids from the tanker to the warehouse and then to the spacecraft carrying humans. Simply moving propellants from one tank to another can cause them to heat up. Engineers have never used these propellants on such a large scale in weightlessness before.

"there are a lot of things we're not sure about," Lauren Ameen, deputy project manager at NASA's cryogenic fluid management office, said in an interview. "much of the fluid physics of transferring cryogenic propellants in space is not clear."

So far, space experiments for the transfer and storage of similar propellants have been carried out on a very small scale on the International Space Station (ISS). However, SpaceX's assumption of propellant storage and transfer is much more complicated.

A long to-do list is the first step for SpaceX to prove that it can transfer propellant from one ship to another. It is not clear when this will be achieved.

"this may not be earlier than six months after the successful test flight, or even longer," said Lisa Watson-Lisa Watson-Morgan, project manager of the manned landing system for the NASA Artemis moon landing program.

With enough money and engineering, it is possible for SpaceX to overcome a long list of challenges between launch testing and its greatest ambitions. Critics have long doubted that the company will be able to accomplish these seemingly insurmountable feats, but they are often proved wrong.

Today, NASA still believes that the starship could land on the moon by 2025. "I am absolutely confident that NASA and SpaceX will achieve this goal," Morgan said. "but 2025 could be a challenge. While this is feasible, the starship needs to prove that it can reach space intact first."

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