Landing the Starship on the moon will soon be a dream come true, as SpaceX keep dusting
the Starship for the first orbital flight.
SpaceX engineers have been trying hard to make the complete starship couple ship 24
and booster 7 stacked on each other and fire up from the earth into space to ensure headway
in space adventure.
Haven spent over a decade constructing the Starship, and the raptor engine, then later
moved to upgrade the raptor engine to raptor 2.
Elon's and SpaceX's struggles shouldn't just be about testing the starship, but launching
it into space should have happened by now.
Several years have been exhausted on the starship project, yet he companies still keeps hopes
alive on launching as many starships as possible on the moon and Mars.
At the least, the world should see the company's progress to get into orbit, not just testing,
testing, and testing all the way.
Today, we will discuss how space successfully tested 200 new raptors 2 engines on ship 24
booster 7 when fully stacked, and touch down on how the last duo starship testing happened.
Stick around as we move on.
Elon Musk is a great man at getting things started and putting together a team to work
on them.
Troubleshooting, creativity, and putting out fires are all likely skills.
That could be because he has an "active mind" and becomes bored with the everyday routine,
so his mind is always stocked at productivity.
In that case, leaving things that are working properly alone (for instance Tesla and SpaceX)
and focusing more on new challenges is the greatest thing he could do.
The billionaire has directed his engineers to work tirelessly on the starship couple,
preparing the fully stacked structure for lift-off so that we can witness the starship
pair ship 24 and booster 7 floating in the sky any time soon.
Starship 24 and Booster 7 are preparing for dynamic skirt pressurization during launch.
In case you don’t know what skirt rehearsal is - It is a pressure testing that is carried
out in a cylindrical or conical shell welded to the vessel's bottom head.
During the test, pressure is transmitted to the foundations via a base ring at the bottom
of the skirt or cylinder, to determine the elastic limit through the area of the cylinder.
While Starship 25 and Booster 8 are preparing to support the Starship on top of the Booster
utilizing three (or six) Vacuum Raptors as support columns.
Skirt pressurization is preferable since it requires less dead weight to achieve a successful
launch, but it has its own set of issues.
The second approach of testing, makes it possible for certain alterations to the Vac Raptors'
expansion bells and the SH Booster's top Liquid Methane tank.
SpaceX is occupied with getting its next-generation Starship rocket ready for its orbital launch
flight, but the company's South Texas rocket factory is also hard at work getting several
more sets of ships and boosters ready for subsequent flight testing.
On November 8th, it became even clearer than normal as SpaceX moved to get both of its
finished Starships ready for fresh rounds of testing.
Starship S25, a more recent prototype that had just arrived at the launch site three
weeks earlier, was taken down from its pedestal by SpaceX to start the busy day.
Three hours later, Starship S24 was "detached" (lifted off of B7 and put onto a platform
on the ground) after spending the previous four weeks stacking them on top of Super Heavy
Booster 7.
Since the middle of October, Booster 7, Ship 24, and Ship 25 have all been busy.
On October 11th, SpaceX initially combined Booster 7 and Ship 24, and they tried to test
the combined rocket.
According to some reports, the initial full-stack test may not have gone well, maybe even putting
the safety of pad personnel who approached the rocket to troubleshoot it at risk, even
though nearly nothing was visible to the general public.
SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk said that the company was "proceeding very carefully" to prevent
an explosion that may delay "Starship progress in the next 6 months" on October 16th since
Ship 24 had been completely detached.
However, if there was a problem on October 13th, SpaceX didn't disclose it, but later
on, the Ship 24 was reinstalled atop Booster 7 with no apparent maintenance or repairs.
Then, on October 24th, SpaceX began a strange series of experiments in which it filled the
liquid oxygen, and liquid methane, on both of the Super Heavy B7, and Ship 24, simultaneously.
According to a rare NASA briefing, they were "single-species propellant" tests, a form
of extra cautious testing that had never been seen at Starbase.
A member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Panel confirmed that the sudden influx of unusually
cautious testing could be attributed to SpaceX "increasing the rigor of its systems engineering
and risk management" incase there will be an unexpected explosion that could damage
the Booster 7.
SpaceX had finished seven single-species tests by the time Ship 24 was unstacked from Booster
7 on November 8th, four of which involved loading liquid oxygen and liquid methane into
both stages.
According to NASA's briefing, SpaceX intends to detach Ship 24 before completing more static
fire testing with Booster 7.
While B7 conducted 1, 3, and 7-engine static fires in August and September, those tests
were far from the full 33-engine static fire required to officially qualify the world's
most powerful rocket.
According to NASASpace managing editor Chris Bergin, SpaceX's next goal is to fire up half
of the Raptors on the Super Heavy B7.
Strangely, even though Ship 24 was thought to have completed all of the standalone testing
required for flight clearance, SpaceX installed the vehicle on a stand used for Starship static
fire testing on November 9th, implying that more standalone testing may be required.
For the main time, that shouldn't be an issue as long as SpaceX completes any Starship testing
around the same time as Booster 7's next static fire campaign, but it could cause a delay
in full-stack launch readiness if it takes any longer.
Finally, on November 8th, Ship 25 was rolled back to Starbase's factory after being removed
from SpaceX's other Starship test stand.
Ship 25 arrived at the launch site for the first time on October 19th and has since completed
four visible tests successfully.
Ship 25 passed a pneumatic proof test on October 28th, demonstrating that its tanks were leak-free
and capable of withstanding flight.
Three cryogenic proof tests were conducted on November 1st, 2nd, and 7th.
The first cryoproof was most likely just that: a test were Ship 25's tanks were pressurized
and filled with cryogenic liquid nitrogen or a combination of liquid oxygen.
The next two tests were most likely conducted on the customized test stand, which has been
semi-permanently outfitted with a set of hydraulic rams that allow SpaceX to simulate the thrust
of six Raptor engines.
At the same time, the Starship's structures are chilled to cryogenic temperatures and
loaded with approximately 1000 tons of cryogenic fluids.
If a Starship can withstand certain loads on the ground, it is assumed to withstand
equivalent stresses in flight, that is why a denser pressure fuel is applied during the
test.
Assuming that Ship 25's initial proof-of-concept tests were successful, which they appear to
have been, SpaceX returned the prototype to its Starbase factory to install six Raptor
engines and a series of shields and firewalls to protect those engines from each other.
Ship 25 will return to the launch site for static fire testing, assuming Ship 24's place
on Suborbital Pad B. It took almost two months for Ship 24 to get from its last cryoproof
to its first static fire.
However, due to a bumpy start in testing, Ship 25 may be ready sooner.
The next stages of Booster 7 and Ship 24 testing could begin soon and we all hope for success.
And a norm, we should be confident that even if Musk spent 24 hours a day, seven days a
week at Starbase putting all of his efforts into the first test flight, it would not go
any faster than it is now.
Musk has faith in his teams, and they have delivered, and are continuously delivering.
We all wanted to see things move faster, but they've reached a point where prudence is
required to avoid costly mistakes that may lead to explosion and damage the pad, including
the launch control systems.
Musk exaggerates practically all the time, and his comment regarding the chief engineer
is certainly exaggerated, if not misleading.
No doubt, his degree is in business administration, but his hobby is computer programming, but
he has no qualifications as a rocket engineer – and it's not something that even the brightest
person can grasp in a year or two, yet he also proven to the world that he can be successful
in the field.
He even goes as far as pushing consistently for reusable rockets and pressing the SpaceX
team until they get it done.
There's no doubt he'd learned a lot in the process.
Hence, he is the "chief engineer" to indicate "the supervisor of the engineering team,"
determining which routes to take and which procedures to skip, rather than "primary engineer,"
who is responsible for the actual rocket or engine design.
How long do you think it will take for spacex to land the starship on the moon?
It looks that the SpaceX Crew Dragon Will Go to the Moon Instead of NASA's because its
Huge Rocket Failure, just click to know all the details.