Elon Musk has provided detailed data about the last landing burn, not simply the movement
from right over the Mechazilla.
Elon Musk and SpaceX have officially revealed their spaceship and extremely heavy landing
tricks.
After nearly a year of speculation, Elon Musk has finally revealed how the SpaceX mechazilla
chopstick would capture the gigantic and exquisite spaceship super-heavy rocket.
Stay till the end to find out how!
These information reveals a lot about what SpaceX aims to accomplish with the Super Heavy,
and it appears that they will do the same with their Falcon 9 rockets.
We all know that starship is the next flagship from Musk and Co that will be responsible
for transporting humans to space and even Mars shortly.
But there are some problems with the landing of these rockets.
What are SpaceX’s new landing tricks for starships and the super-heavy complex development
of SpaceX’s giant mechazilla chopsticks?
Elon Musk uploaded a video of the first mechazilla test in which he revealed the starship’s
very heavy new landing method using SpaceX chopsticks.
Musk also uploaded a video of the spaceship launch tower and how it would catch the super-heavy
rocket during the test by employing large water balloons with the same capacity and
weight as a super-heavy booster.
He then showed a rendering of how the big extremely heavy rocket would be caught and
grabbed by the launch tower.
This will change the course of space travel as we know it.
After reaching an altitude of 800 meters, the booster pad reduces its engine count to
three from thirteen during launch.
This motion causes a significant spike in the body-acceleration graph while posing just
a little difficulty to the overall equipment.
As you can see, several engines have been shut off, which means that the TVC of the
remaining three engines must battle to keep the booster on track.
Regardless of whether a rocket is ascending or descending, anytime there is a loss of
engines, which implies shutting down the original number of engines, the remaining engines must
adapt for the rapid change in thrust vector control.
To be honest, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen the SpaceX mechazilla arm in
action.
It’s important to note that the mechazilla doesn’t move at all except for its chopstick
arms, which move up and slide down.
The super-heavy booster does the majority of the work by descending perfectly to the
point where the chopsticks arms can catch it.
To date, this technique has been employed for all High-altitude Starship Flight Tests.
Starships powered by Raptor engines have avionics and TVC hydraulic systems that allow them
to do this maneuver in mid-flight with relative ease.
At this point, the booster becomes so sluggish that it struggles to provide any meaningful
lift and, as a result, undergoes the necessary changes.
In other words, the booster is programmed to spin its engine components straight down
while positioned over Mechazilla.
Furthermore, the loss of all those engines causes a drop in velocity until it makes the
last approach to position itself in the Centre of the Mechazilla Chopsticks, with the grid
fins pointing left and right.
Ryan Hansen Space has created an amazing animation film about this.
He worked closely with Owe, a SpaceX 3D Creation geek in this movie.
The movie showed how the lifting booster 4 will be put onto SpaceX’s orbital launch
platform, and how the Mechazilla Chopsticks would play a key part in this.
This animation is an unrivaled display of chopstick physics.
Chopsticks have been shown to operate in the same way for both liftings and catching as
a motivator.
In other words, when the boosters prepare to be raised or land, they will use Chopsticks
with little arm or anchor-like projections.
In other words, as the boosters prepare to be raised or land, they will do so on the
Chopsticks with little arm or anchor-like projections.
These anchors are located in the middle of and right beneath the grid fins mentioned
earlier, which are located on each side of the booster’s haul.
As a result, the grid fins must be pointed towards the chopsticks as the booster falls.
One critical concern that experts have raised at this stage is whether SpaceX will be able
to perform a controlled rotating movement on their rockets during descent.
In continuous film showing a Falcon 9 descending from space to LZ1 at Kennedy Space Center,
it was noticed that the whole process of the rotating movement occurring just meters over
the pad was very much under control.
The booster was spotted rotating back and forth shortly before reaching the final meters,
at which point it stopped rotating entirely.
All owing to the grid fins, which make regulating rotational movement easier than it was previously.
Thus, in principle, Super Heavy with the same kind of mechanics might anticipate the same
kind of technology to be at work there as well.
To be extremely safe, Mechazilla has precautionary mechanisms in place if the booster is not
exactly positioned.
It can withstand a few degrees of rotational axis deviation.
The operation of this safeguard has been presented in another animated film by Owe from SpaceX
3D Creation Eccentric.
The video shows specific pushers closing in on the boosters after the catch, guiding them
to the correct center position of the Chopsticks.
SpaceX, with 101 orbit-class rocket booster landings, has all the experience in the world
to pull this out.
As a result, SpaceX has a significant edge over any other space research facility in
the world.
Another intriguing discovery concerning lifting and launching is that the Mechazilla Chopsticks
do not need to move much up or down when collecting the rocket.
One of the primary reasons for this is Mechazilla’s massive size, which is believed to reach 100
tonnes!
The second and most important reason is that the drone ship does not need any dampening
other than the honeycomb crush blocks already existing inside the rocket’s legs.
For instance, a Super Heavy has no legs, hence the concept of employing honeycomb crush blocks
to offset the vertical drop is out the window.
The Super Heavy, on the other hand, has moveable bars that function as rocket landing platforms.
These bars may be adjusted up and down to cover the distance necessary to soften a Falcon
9’s fall with the help of its crushed legs.
Though this distance is only a few millimeters in principle, it is critical to a nice and
smooth landing.
And the gentler the landing, the better the spaceship’s success
When it comes to the final stage of the booster grab, we must confront the 5-second air hovering
Super Heavy does before eventually landing.
This is in contrast to the suicidal burn landings that Falcon 9 is known for.
The suicide burn is a technique employed on every Falcon 9 rocket to reach zero velocity.
Second, the Falcon 9 booster’s engine is a Merlin 1D, which has too much thrust and
cannot be throttled down sufficiently.
The booster before it lands is very light owing to practically empty tanks, making hovering
difficult, and even if they did manage to do so, there would be significant fuel loss.
As a result, the spaceship would come to a halt before resuming its ascent.
The Super Heavy booster, as the name implies, outweighs a Falcon 9 booster even when its
tanks are nearly empty.
The minimum throttle range of a Raptor engine in a Super Heavy is 10% of the total thrust
produced.
Elon Musk has informed us that the value of this force is around 220 tonnes at a chamber
pressure of 300 bar.
Thus, the requirements for hovering are helped by a Super Heavy, and SpaceX aims to utilize
it to their advantage and offer this spaceship a smooth landing.
One clear takeaway from all of this is SpaceX’s commitment to succeed with its Super Heavy
spacecraft.
They are going above and above to ensure that the spaceship’s lift and landing are as
smooth as possible.
But we all know that there is more work to do before humans can ever reach Mars.
But as far as things so, human transportation to Mars is inevitable and the Starship will
play a major role in this.
However, we will have to wait and see how Elon Musk and co handle the future problems.
That’s all for this video, catch you in the next one.
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