There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the race to space is back on once again.
But it's about more than just putting things up into the atmosphere or the lower levels of space
(you hear that, Jeff Bezos?). It's about going and pushing the space industry to places it's
never been able to go to before. Continuous launches, reusable vessels, and of course,
going back to the moon, and finally reaching Mars with a human. SpaceX has been the driving force
behind this rebirth, and they're getting ever closer to completing their dream. Allow us to show
you SpaceX's Super Heavy What You Don't Know. 5. What Is the Super Heavy?
SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket
(collectively referred to as Starship) represent a fully reusable transportation system
designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry
in excess of 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit. Starship is designed to deliver satellites
further and at a lower marginal cost per launch than our current Falcon vehicles.
With a payload compartment larger than any fairing currently in operation or development, Starship
creates possibilities for new missions, including space telescopes even larger than the James Webb.
Starship will enter Mars’ atmosphere at 7.5 kilometers per second and decelerate
aerodynamically. The vehicle’s heat shield is designed to withstand multiple entries,
but given that the vehicle is coming into Mars' atmosphere so hot, we still expect
to see some ablation of the heat shield (similar to wear and tear on a brake pad).
So as you can see, SpaceX is going very big with their Super Heavy Rocket/Starship as they want to
make sure that this is everything it needs to be to get us to Mars and then some. And the best part
is, they've been testing it out for a while. 4. The May Mission
On May 5, Starship serial number 15 (SN15) successfully completed
SpaceX’s fifth high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype from Starbase in Texas.
Similar to previous high-altitude flight tests of Starship,
SN15 was powered through ascent by three Raptor engines, each shutting down in sequence prior
to the vehicle reaching apogee – approximately 10 km in altitude. SN15 performed a propellant
transition to the internal header tanks, which hold landing propellant,
before reorienting itself for reentry and a controlled aerodynamic descent.
The Starship prototype descended under active aerodynamic control, accomplished by independent
movement of two forward and two aft flaps on the vehicle. All four flaps were actuated by
an onboard flight computer to control Starship’s attitude during flight and enabled precise landing
at the intended location. SN15’s Raptor engines reignited as the vehicle performed the landing
flip maneuver immediately before touching down for a nominal landing on the pad.
These test flights of Starship are all about improving the understanding and development
of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on
long-duration interplanetary flights, and help humanity return to the Moon,
and travel to Mars and beyond. And with each successful test,
they're pushing and improving the Super Heavy so that it can go and do more. Which is being
showcased in the recent developments with it. 3. Recent Tests
Amid a flurry of deliveries and work on several new Starship boosters,
SpaceX is preparing the first truly finished Super Heavy for its next steps.
Partially completed by early September, Super Heavy Booster 4 (B4) supported SpaceX’s iconic
‘full stack’ fit test back on August 6th before returning to the build site but has
mostly just floated around Starbase’s launch and test facilities in the seven weeks since
its second trip to the pad. On September 10th, CEO Elon Musk himself suggested that SpaceX had
plans to static fire the booster as early as mid-September – more than six weeks ago.
Obviously, nothing even approximating Super Heavy testing transpired. Instead, at least relative to
rapid-fire Starbase operations in the two years prior, SpaceX has almost absentmindedly worked on
the booster, mostly completing partially-finished wire runs that run its full 69m (~225 ft) length.
In the last few weeks, though, the type of work being done on Super Heavy B4 has changed.
On September 26th, to give the Starbase construction crew more room to install
giant arms on the orbital pad’s ‘launch tower,’ SpaceX removed Super Heavy B4
from the launch mount for the second time, temporarily relocating it to an unused patch
of the pad’s old landing zone. Booster 4 hasn’t been moved since. However, while probably a bit
slower than SpaceX would have liked, large-scale work on the Starship launch tower was effectively
completed last week with the installation of two giant rocket-catching ‘Mechazilla’ arms.
A great deal of work has also been done on Starbase’s orbital tank farm over the last
two months, including the installation of the last few storage tanks, the ‘sleeving’ of those tanks,
a great deal of plumbing, and the start of real propellant deliveries. Save for
a few days spent testing Starship S20 in late September and mid-October, the pad construction
crews that have to evacuate the pad for 6-12 hours for every test have had three full months
to work without interruption. Perhaps the most optimistic explanation for the unusually long gap
between Booster 4 and Ship 20 rollout and testing is that SpaceX consciously chose to put off
vehicle tests to avoid disrupting orbital launch site construction and retasked nearly all Starbase
workers for that construction. 2. Improvements?
Regardless, with the launch tower and orbital tank farm now more or less structurally complete
and work already underway to prepare the tank farm to support its first booster tests,
most of the work that may have been drawing focus and resources away from ship and booster
preparations appears to be wrapping up. That may be why, for the third time, SpaceX technicians
began removing a number of Raptor engines from Super Heavy B4 around the start of October.
Aside from removing around a third to half of Super Heavy’s 29 Raptors,
SpaceX also began slowly but surely installing parts of a steel heatshield designed to protect
those engines during ground testing, ascent, and reentry. Newer Raptors have also been
trickling from Starbase’s build site to the launch pad for installation on the booster
and more engines will likely be (re)installed as heatshield installation progresses.
Perhaps the most unusual part of recent Super Heavy B4 work is the apparent application
of some kind of foam around several racks of pressure vessels (COPVs), hydraulic manifolds,
and umbilical connections installed around the booster’s base. Those racks will eventually be
enclosed inside steel ‘aerocovers’ already staged beside Super Heavy. A number of Twitter users
believe that the foam being selectively applied is for acoustic deadening – meant to protect
sensitive electronics, valves, and computers from the brutal environment Super Heavy itself will
produce at liftoff and during ground testing. Ultimately, with Booster 4 work ramping back up
and the zenith of orbital pad construction activity now likely behind SpaceX, preparations
for major Super Heavy testing will hopefully resume. SpaceX has yet to perform a full Super
Heavy wet dress rehearsal (WDR; fully filling a rocket’s tanks and performing a launch countdown)
or fire up more than three Raptors on a booster or ship prototype. With any luck, that will finally
change in the final months of 2021. 1. Progression
While it's hard to see given all that's being done, it's clear that SpaceX is doing all that
it can to go and deliver everything it needs to make sure that the Super Heavy,
its boosters, and the Starship are ready for the launches they want to use it for.
Part of the reason that SpaceX is doing so well right now is that they make everything in-house
and as a result they are able to do many launches in a year and fix things when it all goes wrong
(and it goes wrong a LOT sadly). But with each iteration, with each progression, they're getting
better, they're getting more advanced and they're fixing all the problems that go and pop up.
Soon, hopefully very soon, we'll be able to see multiple launches with the Super Heavy and
getting a feeling for how long SpaceX will be until its next big missions. We're still
a ways off from Mars, but the moon is likely going to happen sooner rather than later,
and that'll be the ultimate test for the Starship and Super Heavy. Thus why
they're trying to make sure everything is good before they even think of putting people in it.
So what do you think? What do you think of this look at the Super Heavy rocket and its spaceship
attachment that SpaceX are developing? Do you think that this will indeed be the vehicle by
which we not only get back into space on the regular, but we reach the moon (again) and
Mars with? Will Elon Musk be the reason that we are finally able to colonize space? Or are there
more hurdles to come? Let us know in the comments below, and we'll see you next time on the channel!