High-altitude flight test of the 'Starship SN8'.space X
As Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic congratulate each other on the success of their first sightseeing flights to the gate of space, two other participants in the race go ahead with mixed results.
One is Boeing, which has been forced to indefinitely cancel the launch of its
Starliner
capsule
.
It should have taken off last Tuesday, then Wednesday, and was finally removed and sent back to the maintenance hangar to repair problems discovered at the last minute.
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Visitors from outer space
For Boeing, it rains over wet.
The
Starliner is
due to a NASA contract that awarded it the construction of two manned capsules (but capable of autonomous flight) for more than 4.8 billion dollars.
These are vehicles to operate in low orbit, not for lunar missions.
Space X also participates in the program, with an allocation of about 3 billion.
The first
Starliner
took off (unmanned) in December 2019. Under automatic command it arrived in front of the Space Station, but a
software
glitch
prevented it from docking.
He had to return to the ground without completing his mission.
That was more than a year and a half ago, which is how long it took Boeing to prepare the second capsule, presumably with all the faults fixed.
Or almost
Space X
Very different is the case of Space X. Its boss Elon Musk has put a frantic pace to the works to prepare the next mission, perhaps as early as next September.
And it promises to be the most spectacular launch since the days of the trips to the Moon.
This time it's about testing the
complete
Starship
rocket for the first time
.
The upper stage has already made numerous trips up to 15 kilometers high.
Most culminated in an impact or explosion at the time of landing.
It is what they ironically call a RUD:
Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
or
Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
.
In other words, the ship is left in pieces.
But the last flight went well.
The ship completed a spectacular ballet during its fall to come to rest vertically next to the platform from which it had taken off.
Technically it is an extraordinary feat, only comparable to the Falcon rocket landings that are already seen as routine.
Now, the S
tarship
that makes the number 20 will be installed on an even larger rocket, the
Super Heavy,
this time, to reach Earth orbit.
The result is a monstrous launcher, 10 meters taller and almost 2,000 tons heavier than the
Saturn 5s
from the Apollo program.
To get off the ground, it will fire a bunch of 29 engines at the same time, which is almost a record only surpassed by the N-1, the Russian lunar rocket, which was riding 30. But the N-1 only took off four times to finish always done a junk heap on the Baikonur steppe.
Record time
The construction of such a monster has been done in a very short time, in a simple assembly hangar in the Space X polygon in Boca Chica, in the Gulf of Mexico next to the border. Once placed vertically on the transport platform (a thirty-wheeler), the installation of the 29 motors was done in less than 48 hours.
Other projects are at an unbridled pace. The launch tower, with a height of 146 meters, was built in eight segments that were stacked one on top of the other by an equally monstrous crane. In mid-May there was nothing but sand and brush; Today, the shoreline is taller than Cape Canaveral ever seen. And not only that, but also a raised circular platform to support the rocket (nine meters in diameter) plus a whole complex of huge tanks to store oxygen and fuel. And in the case of the latter, also to collect it when the tanks are emptied after the tests: it is methane, which for environmental reasons is prohibited from discharging into the atmosphere.
Musk is confident that he will be able to launch the launch before the end of the summer, although the aeronautical authorities have not yet given authorization.
In any case, this first attempt is not intended to recover the
Super Heavy
.
You will simply be dropped into the Gulf of Mexico.
And the same will be done with the second stage, which will brake before completing its first orbit, near Hawaii.
But in future releases both segments will be reusable.
That is the key to reducing the costs of each flight in a way that just ten years ago was unthinkable.
Rafael Clemente
is an industrial engineer and was the founder and first director of the Barcelona Science Museum (now CosmoCaixa).
He is the author of A small step for [a] man (Dome Books).
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