Just a few years from now,
in 2026
Starship is expected to land the
first humans on Mars!
And to get there
SpaceX is building the biggest
and most powerful rocket ever!
This is the Evolution of SpaceX's Starship!
Elon Musk the CEO and founder of SpaceX has a very ambious goal for SpaceX.
"There could be some natural events
or some manmade events
that end civilization as we know it.
and.. or in life as we know it.
And so it's important that we try to
become a multiplanetary civilization, extend life beyond Earth,
um, and to do so as quickly as we can."
He wants humans to become a multiplanetary species.
Meaning that humans would live on multiple planets.
SpaceX has built some powerful rockets before,
which you can see in the ‘Evolution of SpaceX’,
but Starship is on a whole other level.
In 2012, Elon Musk mentioned the rocket as the ‘Mars Colonial Transporter’,
but this name was changed to ‘Interplanetary Transport System’ or ‘ITS’ in 2016,
as the rocket would be able to “go well beyond Mars”.
SpaceX showed the world an animation that looks like something from a SciFi movie,
but his plans were very real.
In space the giant two staged rocket would separate
and the booster would return back to Earth where it could be reused again.
Meanwhile the spacecraft would continue its journey to Mars.
Months later the spacecraft will arrive at Mars and land there vertically.
The ITS rocket would be enormous,
with a height of 122 meters,
making it the largest rocket ever built,
even larger than the Saturn V.
While the Saturn V was designed to carry 3 humans,
the ITS could carry 100 passengers or more.
It should also carry 550 thousand Kilograms to low Earth orbit,
whereas the Saturn V could only lift 135 thousand kilograms.
To be able to carry such an enormous weight,
the ITS would use very powerful Raptor engines.
In fact, the ITS was supposed to have 42 Raptor engines
which combined should give it 128 Meganewtons at liftoff!
However, in 2017 plans were changed significantly.
The rocket was redesigned and the name was changed to ‘BFR’.
Let’s just say it stands for ‘Big Falcon Rocket’.
The rocket would be much smaller than the ITS with 106 meters in height
and instead of 42 Raptor engines it would have just 31 of these engines.
Another revision of the rocket was made in 2018,
this time it added fins to help stabilize the ship when passing through atmosphere of the Earth and Mars.
You might wonder why the design kept changing,
well something like this has never been done before, so SpaceX has to keep innovating.
One very impressive achievement of SpaceX is the partial reusiblity of its rockets.
This means the boosters can land on Earth and be reused again,
which also looks really cool.
Without reusability costs would be way too high.
Imagine if airplanes wouldn’t be reusable.
That would mean if passengers wanted to fly with a Boeing 747,
they would have to pay 800 thousand dollars each,
just to get back the costs of the aircraft!
Fun Fact
In the future people may be able to travel with this giant rocket to different countries on Earth.
Most long distance trips will be less than 30 minutes,
and the flight can take people anywhere on Earth in less than an hour!
It probably will still take 4 hours to get through security though.
In 2018 came a significant change when SpaceX changed from carbon fiber to stainless steel.
Elon Musk said the true cost of carbon fiber are almost $200 dollars per kilogram,
while stainless steel is just $3 dollars.
In 2019 SpaceX made the most recent rocket design with stainless steel.
The 120 meter tall rocket also got a new name,
Starship.
The first stage is the Super Heavy Rocket
and the second stage is the Starship spacecraft.
The Super Heavy Rocket is only needed to escape Earth’s gravity.
On the moon or Mars the booster isn’t needed,
and can liftoff just by the spacecraft itself.
Starship is designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit,
the Moon, Mars and beyond.
It will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed
with 72 Meganewtons thrust at liftoff.
That’s almost double the amount of thrust of the Saturn V.
Starship is also able to carry in excess of 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.
Fun Fact
NASA announced they selected Starship to land the first astronauts on the lunar surface
since the Apollo program.
Billionaire Yasuku Maezawa purchased all seats aboard the Starship.
The first civilian mission to the moon is called the dearMoon Project
and is planned to fly around the moon in 2023.
Anyone in the world could have filled in an application to have a chance to go to the moon for free!
Over 1 million people want to join him in his journey to the moon.
Who will join him is still unknown
as he is in the process of selecting 8 people to fly with him.
In 2019 SpaceX started doing test flights.
The first test vehicle they used was the Starhopper.
In August 2019 the starhopper hopped to an altitude of 150 meters or 490 feet before landing vertically.
It demonstrated the first use of the Raptor engine in real flight.
One year later, in 2020, SpaceX made a new test vehicle which just looks like a flying grain silo.
Two test flights were done with the Starship SN5 and SN6.
In December 2020 the Starship SN8 was launched.
For the first time it didn’t look like a test vehicle,
but it had the actual Starship design.
The vehicle successfully launched,
ascended to an altitude of 12.5 kilometers or 41 thousand feet,
performed the skydive descent maneuver,
relit the engines fueled by the header tanks,
and steered to the landing pad.
The flip maneuver was successful and really looks like something out of the future.
The Starship SN8 did crash however.
Fun Fact
also discussed in the evolution of NASA series,
spacecraft normally use a parachute for landing.
However, Starship uses an unique landing maneuver,
where it will perform a belly flop and lands vertically,
making it incredibly challenging.
In February 2021 Starship SN9 was launched.
During the landing burn, a Raptor engine failed
which caused the SN9 to lose control and hit the landing pad at a 40 degree angle.
Then came the testflight for Starship SN10.
It ascended to an altitude of 10 kilometers or 33 thousand feet
and performed a landing flip maneuver
before successfully touching down on the landing pad.
In March 2021 Starship SN11 was launched in heavy fog.
According to Elon Musk it had engine issues during ascent.
Debris was seen falling from the sky, indicating that the vehicle had exploded mid-air.
And finally the latest testflight,
as of making this video,
was launched on May 13th 2021.
The new Starship prototype known as SN15 received many major upgrades over previous vehicles.
I mean isn’t this just one of the most futuristic things you have ever seen?
It just looks like CGI.
The testflight was very successful
and that is very promising for the future.
Fun Fact
Starship will need to refuel in space as it requires a lot of fuel to lift a large payload.
The plan for Starship is in-orbit refueling.
A second Starship will be used to transfer fuel.
However, in-orbit refueling is very challenging
especially as transferring large amounts of propellant
between two spacecraft of this size has never been done before.
SpaceX also started doing tests with the Super Heavy booster,
and in July 20th 2021 did a static fire test for the first time.
SpaceX will continue to test and improve Starship
to push for new boundaries.
I believe we can say this is Apollo for our generation
and truly a worthy successor to the Saturn V rocket.
SpaceX has planned the earliest crewed flight to Mars in 2026.
That’s only 5 years from now!
And Elon Musk has made it very clear
that the goal is to eventually colonize Mars.
I can’t believe we’re living in an era
where we might see another planet being colonized.
To get there Starship is crucial,
so I’m very excited to see how SpaceX will continue to evolve Starship.
Please subscribe
and leave a comment
if you’re watching this before
we colonized Mars.