The second launch attempt of the Starship is imminent, after the US Federal Aviation Administration announced that it has granted SpaceX the license to once again carry out a test flight with its mega space rocket. And Elon Musk’s space company has already set a date and time for takeoff: this Saturday, in a twenty-minute launch window that opens at 2:00 p.m. Spanish peninsular time, 7:00 a.m. at the SpaceX base in Boca Chica (Texas, USA) where the megarocket is already located on its launch pad.
If Starship successfully completes the test this time, it will become the largest and most powerful space rocket in history. And beyond its records, the importance of this fully reusable spacecraft lies in the role that NASA has given it as a vehicle for the first woman to set foot on the Moon, and in Musk’s plans to use it to reach Mars. .
However, despite this promising future, in everyone’s memory is the result of Starship’s first flight attempt: the rocket was destroyed after almost four minutes of flight due to a serious failure, while a huge sinkhole, punctured by the exhaust from the 33 engines, and extensive damage was caused in the surrounding area due to the debris projected during takeoff.
Given this result, many thought that the second attempt would be delayed for more than a year. From the SpaceX company, on the other hand, they preferred to see the positive side: the superrocket had taken off and the launch tower was intact. The dynamics of Elon Musk, president of the American aerospace company, is unstoppable and the new vehicle is already on the platform about to take off.
Why did the first launch cause so much damage? Basically, because the brutal exhaust from the engines directly impacted the concrete on which the rocket pedestal sat. In theory it was special concrete, resistant to high temperatures, so the engineers decided not to wait to have a water cooling system installed, which would have protected the platform.
What damage was caused? Under the pedestal there was a crater several meters deep that left the foundations exposed. Large pieces of concrete flew like a hailstorm, in all directions, and some dented the large methane and oxygen tanks about a hundred meters away; Others destroyed the windows of a van parked in the supposed security zone. And some of them even hit the rocket engines themselves, causing the premature shutdown of at least six of a total of 33.
The worst thing was that numerous federal agencies, including environmental protection, revoked authorization to continue their launches from Boca Chica, at the SpaceX base located next to a natural park on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Even the US space agency even expressed its concern, since Musk’s company is building a similar launch tower next to the platform 39A from the NASA base at Cape Canaveral. Apart from other considerations, this is a historic place (the first flight to the Moon took off from there), which justified asking SpaceX for guarantees regarding future launches.
Why is SpaceX experiencing so many failures? So far, it has only done so during development flights. The Falcon rocket crashed ten times before achieving the first soft landing. But that was eight years ago. This time, for SpaceX, the recovery of the lower stage of those rockets is pure routine. 250 Falcons have already flown, with a failure rate of less than 5%, almost all concentrated in the first period. 39 first stages are continually recycled in successive releases. One of them has been reused 18 times. The economic advantage that this represents over the disposable rockets of other companies is evident.
Is it reasonable to suffer so much failure, even during the development stages? SpaceX claims to follow a “design, test, fix, repeat” philosophy. It is a private company that can afford to accumulate failures to accelerate development. Conclusions are drawn from each one that allow errors to be corrected until the final product is reliable. So reliable that it is already trusted with the launch of astronauts and even the Department of Defense has contracted SpaceX to put military satellites into orbit.
The case of NASA is diametrically opposite. It works with federal funds and therefore cannot afford any failure if it does not want to see its allocation for next year compromised. Of course, years and years pass until their projects come to fruition; and they are rarely executed within budget.
What improvements does the Starship have for this second launch? First of all, the installation of a platform water cooling system. Basically it is a shower in reverse, which launches a waterfall upwards just before starting the engines. That should protect the concrete and, at the same time, absorb some of the brutal acoustic energy it gives off.
The decoupling system for the two parts of the rocket (the upper and lower stages) has also been redesigned, which did not work the other time. The idea is that it occurs spontaneously: it would be enough to open the jaws that join them, make the rocket rotate on itself and the centrifugal force itself would be enough to separate the lower stage, already almost empty of fuel and, therefore, very light. .
In any case, and just in case the theory doesn’t work, the ring connecting the two segments is a new design, perforated with large vertical slots. If the separation fails and the upper stage engines turn on despite everything, the gases will escape there. It is the system that the Russians have already applied on their Soyuz rockets for three quarters of a century.
The limitations of a test flight
If all goes well, Starship will describe a trajectory with a perigee so low that it will fall before completing a single orbit of the Earth. She should crash into the Pacific Ocean, near Hawaii, without a controlled landing being attempted. Although both stages of the rocket will be recoverable in the future, this time neither of them will be saved. For now, the main interest is to see if the rocket takes off without problems and its load is complete. almost an orbit.
The loss of both parts of such a complex vehicle is part of SpaceX’s plans. In their Boca Chica factory they are producing Starships almost in an assembly line regime. The one that is going to fly now has the number 25 and its booster, the 9. And they are relatively cheap. They are made from stainless steel, not exotic alloys, and their Raptor engines use many 3D-printed parts (for example, the turbopump), which reduces both cost and assembly time. SpaceX claims it is producing one Raptor a day, valued at a quarter of a million dollars; 50 years ago, each F-1 engine that powered the Saturn 5 rocket on missions to the Moon was worth 15 million (at the time) and were manufactured at a rate of 10 or 12 a year.
The next step, whether this test is a success, is still unclear. SpaceX is a private company that does not disclose many details about its plans, as many are industrial secrets. In any case, it has a commitment to NASA to develop the lunar landing craft —based, precisely, on the upper stage of the Starship rocket—for the Artemis missions that plan to land on the Moon starting in 2025.
In order to make this future lunar mission a reality, SpaceX will first have to achieve refueling in orbit, a maneuver never tested on the scale that involves refilling the tanks of a Starship. That is why it is likely that Elon Musk’s immediate plans are in the direction of first reaching orbit and then testing the fuel transfer. That would mean at least two or three more launches of its mega rocket. Maybe for next year.
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