SpaceX is moving towards a new Starship launch, after the static ignition test of its engines carried out on August 25. This time yes, all 33 engines of its Super Heavy thruster were fired, although two of them went out prematurely, and success in this previous technical maneuver on the ground is essential for the American space company to decide to try again to put its super rocket into orbit. Elon Musk has said on X (formerly Twitter) that this flight will be soon, despite the fact that federal authorizations for the launch are still pending; and last week they came to light new details about environmental damage and wildlife, caused by Starship’s previous attempt at the protected wilderness surrounding the SpaceX base.
Super Heavy Booster 9 static fire successfully lit all 33 Raptor engines, with all but two running for the full duration. Congratulations to the SpaceX team on this exciting milestone! pic.twitter.com/1hzs768vHg
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 25, 2023
Elon Musk’s company claims to have made the necessary modifications around the platform to prevent its destruction and the tornado of remains that were shot in the failed launch on April 20. If SpaceX is cleared to fly and the changes made to the platform and rocket work, Starship will by far become the largest and most powerful rocket ever successfully launched. However, there is another record that he can no longer achieve.
One of the newer features of the Starship, Elon Musk’s super rocket that exploded on its first flight attempt, is that its engines burn methane fuel (metalox is its name in the jargon of the trade, since it is a mixture of methane and liquid oxygen). The same can be said for the Blue Origin orbital rocket being developed by its competitor, Jeff Bezos. Some Chinese private companies have also decided to follow this path.
Although he hadn’t been successful in his first four or five attempts, this summer a company called landspace, which hardly anyone had heard of, heralded the achievement of launching a methane-powered rocket through all stages. With hardly any prior publicity, on July 12 this space shuttle launched an inert load into low Earth orbit, a simple ballast to simulate the weight of a real satellite. Despite the name in English, the company is Chinese and the test was carried out from the JiuQuan polygon, in the middle of the Gobi desert.
It is the first time that an all-methane rocket has made a successful orbital flight: China has made history with the Zhuque-2, a medium launch vehicle named in honor of vermilion bird, one of the four mythological creatures that appear in the constellations of the Chinese zodiac. In everyone’s memory is the odyssey of the Starship (SpaceX’s super-heavy-lift space shuttle, Elon Musk’s space company), which ended with the destruction of the vehicle and part of its launch pad last April. More recently, an engine on the Blue Origin blew up during static tests. Even the Chinese have had their problems: the first launch of the Zhuque-2 failed late last year, failing to start the second-stage auxiliary engines when it had officially reached space.
As a fuel, methane has some advantages over the kerosene that most rockets burn, including SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Methane is slightly more efficient, although that advantage is increased by injecting it under pressure into the combustion chamber, it is cheap to produce and easy to store in the rocket’s tanks. It has to be kept at low temperatures, though not as cold as the liquid hydrogen used by higher-performance engines, such as those used by NASA’s Artemis program’s SLS space shuttles to return to the Moon. In these rockets, in addition, helium must be injected into the tanks to propel the fuel towards the bombs. Apart from the fact that helium is expensive, the auxiliary circuit for tanks and pipes supposes an added complication in the design of the vehicle. And all this affects the cost of each launch. On the other hand, in methane rockets, when this fuel evaporates, it already creates its own pressurization system.
The advantages of methane
Methane combustion generates less CO₂ and other pollutants than kerosene, a factor to take into account when evaluating the ecological impact of each mission. But, above all, its great advantage when applied to reusable rockets is that it leaves little residue. All you have to do is visualize how the Falcon 9 land, with its lower fuselage blackened after only a few minutes of turning on its braking engine, which burns kerosene.
When SpaceX decided to go for methane, Elon Musk pointed to a reason that bordered on science fiction: the atmosphere of Mars, its ultimate destination, is essentially CO₂. That will allow future expeditions to the red planet to synthesize the methane they need for the return trip right there. It is an operation that has not yet been tested, but the robot perseverance has performed an experiment to extract oxygen from the Martian air, at a rate of six grams per hour. In a real mission, the engines will need about seven tons of oxygen and approximately half of methane to return to Earth.
From an operational standpoint, methane cleanliness is essential. Musk’s plan to go to Mars involves first launching a multitude of his Starship superrockets, at a rate of two a week (or perhaps more), to bring the payload necessary to successfully face a Martian expedition up to low Earth orbit.
In fact, on those round trips to Earth orbit, it is planned that the Starship propellants will not land on cement platforms (as is the case with the current SpaceX Falcon 9), but rather go to the pedestal itself from which they they took off. A pair of metal arms in the service tower must grab the propeller, in the last seconds of its descent, and deposit it at its base. There, without having to move it, they will be able to clean their engines of the little residue left by the methane, check the rest of the systems, adapt a ship on the propellant and get the superrocket ready to take off again in a matter of hours. At least, that’s Elon Musk’s optimistic dream. So far, however, the only methane rocket that has flown successfully is Chinese.
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