SpaceX’s operation out of Boca Chica, Texas has been hard at work creating a reusable
spacecraft capable of taking humans to the moon or even Mars. It started with short hops,
then test flights multiple kilometers up with some spectacular landings, both elegant and
explosive. Now the company is preparing to make the next giant leap for their space program:
they’re going to send their latest prototype into orbit for the
first time ever.
Sure, SpaceX has launched stuff into orbit
before. Lots of stuff, actually. At this point, Falcon 9 launches and landings seem practically
routine. But for a number of reasons, Starship is different, like for example it uses a revolutionary
new engine. The Falcon 9 relies on the trusty Merlin engines, but a big part of the Starship
development process has been designing and refining an engine the company has dubbed
Raptor. The Raptor uses liquid oxygen and methane,
a departure from Merlin’s more conventional combination of liquid oxygen and rocket-grade
kerosine known as RP-1. The Raptor also uses what’s known as a full-flow
staged combustion system which uses every bit of fuel for thrust unlike Merlin’s open-cycle
system. These changes are designed to make Starship’s engines more powerful, efficient,
and reusable, all desirable traits for engines that could one day ferry people to and from
other worlds. To date, Starship prototypes have had at
most three raptor engines, but SN 20 will have six. The additional three aren’t for getting the
craft into orbit, but don’t you worry we’ll get to that. No, the other three raptors are optimized
to work better in the vacuum of space. The most obvious difference between them and the
sea-level optimized raptors is the addition of a giant bell nozzle that improves efficiency
in space. So then, how is SN20 going to get into
orbit if it only has just the three sea level optimized engines plus the added weight of
hauling three more engines and their humongous nozzles up there. The solution is to carry
Starship up with a booster rocket called the Super Heavy, which will sport 29 raptor engines.
This will be the first time ever this massive booster stage has flown. SpaceX briefly stacked
one stage on top of the other back in August. It was only to check the fit but at 120 meters
tall, it became the tallest rocket ever assembled.
One of the major advances SpaceX made to
rocket science is landing the first stage of their rockets safely back on the ground.
Falcon 9 boosters gently touching down on drone ships not only look straight out of
science fiction, but have allowed the company to reuse their rockets over and over. Their
goal is to master the same trick with Starship, and they’ve been fine-tuning just how to
bring it back down gently. If Starship is ever going to land on other planets like Mars,
they’ll have to get it down perfectly if they don’t want to flatten the crew or cargo.
Reusability will also drive down the cost of launches, so SpaceX would like to make
both stages of the launch capable of soft landing, although the proposed design for
the Super Heavy involves a tower with grabbing arms that would literally catch it as it slowly
descended toward earth.
For SN 20 and its Super Heavy, gentle touchdowns aren’t part of the plan. Its launch is solely
focused on getting Starship into orbit, and once it gets there, who cares how it comes
down right now? The Super Heavy is expected to hit the water in the gulf of Mexico, while, fingers
crossed, Starship reaches orbit before coming down again near Hawaii.
SN20 has had a few static fire tests to make sure both the vacuum and sea level raptors
are functioning. If the
Super heavy boosts Starship into orbit successfully, then SpaceX’s plans will really start taking
shape. They’ll have to perfectly land each
stage of the rocket and probably figure out a million other things, but still the outcome
of this upcoming starship launch could give us a very clear glimpse of what is to come.
If you want to learn more about Starship, check out our countdown to launch playlist.
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