spaceX, the company in charge of developing a gargantuan vehicle that will take humans
to mars, has been facing many challenges these few days.
Just on the 11th of July, SpaceX wanted to try their luck by carrying out a fire test
on booster 7.
But the SpaceX team received the shocker when the raptor two attached beneath booster seven
got blown up.
But it didn't end there – something very worse just recently happened.
The chopsticks which SpaceX has been working on for a very long time now failed to work
as intended, so SpaceX couldn't use the chopsticks arms to lift the booster seven on the launch
stand as intended.
As a result, the launch team had to use the LR11000 to lift the booster since the chopsticks'
arms failed to move up.
What actually went wrong with the arms this time, and how will this recent challenge delay
SpaceX from launching the booster into orbit this year?
Join us in another awesome video today as we explore how the chopsticks could be a stubborn
challenge SpaceX will face in 2022.
The chopsticks were aimed to be the fabulous mechanism that would make the starship mobile
while it stands horizontally; it was intended to have about two degrees of freedom.
That is, it should be able to lift the starship from the transfer carriage and position it
properly on the launch stand, so it will be ready to fire up into space.
Then, the two arms of the chopsticks should open while the starship slowly falls in between
them as it returns from space, then the two arms will close back – a scenario that Elon
Musk refers to as grabbing the starship from orbit.
All these processes successfully worked in simulation software after the simulation team
did their configuration, but it became a stubborn challenge for the process to work in our real
world.
Well, SpaceX engineers don't seem to be discouraged in resolving the problem.
Rather, they are hell-bent on continuously trying different ways to make things work,
just as seen on simulation software.
After the incident in July, SpaceX had to roll the affected booster seven back to the
factory in its bay for inspection.
Though some raptor two got burnt in the testing process, how many were damaged wasn't noted.
Still, the incident resulted from the fireballs that generated shock waves.
But the company has rectified it in a good condition to get booster seven ready again
for another fire test.
Now let's talk a bit about what made the chopsticks fail.
Remember that the chopstick utilizes an electric power hoist and wire rope to lift itself upward
while using the hydraulic actuator to grip the two arms together and rotate the booster,
since hydraulic system are built to carry heavy loads.
All these functions failed because the chopsticks arms unexpectedly broke the hydraulic pipe
attached to the launch tower.
The hydraulic fluid that runs through the pipe spilled into the air, causing a smell
that took over the whole Bocha Chica atmosphere.
Musk took it to Twitter to update SpaceX fans that he loves the smell of the hydraulic fluid.
In the morning hours of the same day, when the SpaceX team went to assess what went wrong,
they discovered that the hydraulic system had broken down and would demand some time
to fix it.
But that's another roadblock for SpaceX to come close to the dream of settling on Mar
and colonizing it.
Let’s explain more about the hydraulic system failure.
Any tiny leakage on the hydraulic cylinder can cause it to fail because the little leakage
could eject working fluid into the surroundings, making it malfunction.
The major problem of any hydraulic actuator is usually caused by leakage, like the sump
motor, direction control valve, and load line could have a major problem.
And the mistakes during assembly could also result in these major issues.
If the planning engineers, manufacturing teams, and assembly crews had known what they were
doing, this would have been completely avoidable.
Hydraulics is a low-tech, totally calculable, and old style of technology.
Safety margins may have been disregarded also, and a fitter may not have assembled cutting
rings correctly, cheap, badly made mounting nuts on cylinders may not have been prestressed,
and so on.
It's not difficult but accuracy and perseverance are crucial.
So the SpaceX team has to troubleshoot and get these things fixed.
After all, SpaceX crew are best good at that.
In light of the fact that SpaceX plans to catch the super heavy during the first orbital
launch, the chopstick arms need to be in good functioning condition in order to be reliable
to catch the fully stacked super-heavy rocket.
Since SpaceX is now facing so many obstacles with everything, it is safe to assume that
the company will have to spend a huge amount of money on everything maintenance during
the first test flight.
Again, we can't say for sure, but given that booster seven and the chopsticks are having
trouble functioning properly, we can anticipate that ship 24 will experience yet another issue
as it is attempting to get itself into Earth's orbit.
This isn't a terrible hope for SpaceX, but when the company starts to test the first
giant rocket ever built, there is certain to be some issue at some point.
Despite this, we should be able to get to where we want to go, that’s Mars, if we
keep working hard.
What is preventing SpaceX from arriving on Mars at this time?
Is the starship chopsticks arms or the super heavy booster 7?
It is an extremely challenging issue and the amount of money required to solve it is unimaginably
high.
When SpaceX was first got founded, it had a pretty little amount of money and no income.
They had to work out how to produce rocket engines in addition to figuring out how to
safely land a rocket, and recall that before their work, NOBODY had ever landed a rocket
on Mars alive and come back to earth safely.
They faced the challenge of coming up with a method to generate sufficient revenue to
cover the huge expenses associated with constructing a large number of rockets.
The journey to Mars will require dozens of rockets, each being the largest one that has
ever been successfully launched.
To get that kind of money, they needed first to devise the idea of StarLink and then successfully
carry out the launch of a greater number of satellites than any other time in the history
of civilization.
They wasted six months because of the ridiculous environmental impact study conducted by the
FAA...
They had wasted even more time in the process of acquiring a launch license.
They are being harassed by false lawsuits filed by companies such Dish Network, and
their likes, whose revenue is being DESTROYED as a direct result of StarLink's far superior
technology.
The person considered the "brains behind the company", Elon Musk, divides his time between
working on getting humans to Mars and preventing global warming by producing solar panels,
batteries, and electric cars.
As it stands, he puts in anything from 100 to 120 hours of work each week try that for
a while, and you want him to work FASTER?
that will be impossible.
If it were a failure of engineering or design when the starship was in transit to Mars,
it would be horrible for SpaceX, but if it was something like an unexpected meteorite
that destroyed the ship, then it is just one of the risks associated with traveling through
space.
The loss would be awful, but it would not have been possible to stop it.
Even if you covered the entire starship with a thickness of one inch of lead, there is
still a chance that a micrometeoroid may penetrate it.
Again, it would depend on the circumstances, but if the crew were to die while they were
on Mars, SpaceX would NOT be responsible for their deaths.
SpaceX is working on the infrastructure that will bring us to Mars but not the infrastructure
that will allow us to live there.
People not involved in the space industry may not grasp the difference, but those in
the space sector DO understand it.
If they did not have sufficient supplies, SpaceX would receive a lot of criticism for
beginning the trip too soon; nevertheless, because there are so many different factors,
it is difficult to forecast every situation and conclude.
Another question we also have to put in our thought is; Will SpaceX ever be able to send
humans to Mars amidst all these failures?
Let's guess that SpaceX won't actually do that on their own.
But when the company invests more funds to rectify many system failures, they may not
have the necessary funds to land humans on Mars.
Because landing on Mars is another thing, and making it sustainable for humans to live
comfortably is second.
It will be in the hands of the U.S government to support SpaceX with qualified scientists
to make Mars sustainable.
Do you think SpaceX will be successful in its mission to land humans on Mars?
While all this controversy happens SpaceX Reveals The Master Plan On How To Catch Super
Heavy On First Launch Attempt, click on the video to know more about this.