In the fifth Starship test, SpaceX managed to catch the megarocket booster in flight on its first attempt, thus completing a chain of complex maneuvers. After launch, powered by the 33 engines of the first stage – the booster, called Super Heavy – almost all of its fuel was exhausted in just under three minutes. There was only a relatively small reserve left to execute the braking and landing maneuver. A few seconds after the separation of the second stage—the upper spacecraft, called Ship, which continued flying powered by its own thrusters—the superjet made a turn, placing its engines in reverse gear to execute the first braking.
This first flipping maneuver is performed by firing only 10 motors. It is enough to force the fall towards the ground, in the direction of the launching base. At that moment is when the flight director must make a momentous decision: if everything seems in order, braking will continue until reaching a point on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico; On the contrary, if any of the thousands of parameters are not in order, the braking is shortened so that the rocket falls into the sea.
In yesterday’s test, everything seemed to be in order. Once stabilized on the coast, the rocket turned off its ring of 10 engines and turned on the three central ones, which allow fine control of the landing maneuver. The descent towards the launch tower was not done vertically, but rather following an inclined trajectory flying over the beach. It is a precaution to ensure that if a failure occurs at the last minute, at least it will not fall on the platform.
Located in that inclined position and already only a hundred meters high, the rocket moved horizontally, meeting the tower, where the two mechanical arms were already open to hunt to the vehicle, holding it by its upper part, just under the four aerodynamic fins that had served to guide its descent. Then the arms—nicknamed chopsticks (chopsticksin English)—closed, the three engines shut down and the Super Heavy remained suspended on the pedestal from which it had taken off seven minutes earlier. This booster does not use landing legs on its return to baseunlike that of the Falcon rockets that SpaceX reuses to put satellites into orbit, to launch space probes and to upload astronauts to the International Space Station.
What would happen if a propulsion failure occurs during the final phase of the maneuver? Probably not much, although no one wants to check it. The fuel load is already almost exhausted and the Super Heavy is little more than a relatively light stainless steel cylinder whose weight is concentrated in its 30 already turned off engines. The platform would suffer damage, no doubt, but SpaceX is confident that it would be easily repairable in a short time.
If all goes well, as happened on this fifth Starship test flight, the empty booster is installed on its pedestal. When the rocket has completed its tests and is fully operational, it will only be necessary to check and clean its engines, and refill it with fuel so that it is ready for the next flight. Elon Musk’s dream was to launch his Starship megarockets at a weekly rate, or perhaps even more frequently. The success of yesterday’s test brings that utopia closer to the realm of reality.
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