Global Courant 2023-04-30 06:42:46
The SpaceX starship lifts off from the launch pad during a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on April 20, 2023.
Patrick T Fallon | Afp | Getty Images
Elon Musk expects SpaceX to spend about $2 billion developing its Starship rocket this year, as the company pushes for the first launch earlier this month.
“My expectation for the next flight would be to get into orbit,” Musk said during a discussion on Twitter Spaces on Saturday.
While SpaceX does secondary rounds about twice a year to give employees and other shareholders of the company a chance to sell stock, Musk said the company “doesn’t expect it to have to raise money” to advance the Starship program and its other ventures. to reinforce.
“As far as I know, we don’t need to raise any additional money for SpaceX,” Musk said.
As for the dramatic first fully stacked Starship rocket launch on April 20,” the SpaceX CEO said, “The result was about what I expected, and maybe a little more than my expectations.”
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SpaceX has several more prototypes in various stages of assembly and aims to launch the next attempt to reach space with the towering rocket within a few months.
“The purpose of these missions is just information. For example, we don’t have a payload or anything — it’s just to learn as much as we can,” Musk said.
He estimated the probability of getting into orbit on a Starship flight this year at “probably” 80%, but claimed he thinks there is “100% chance of being in orbit within 12 months.” come”.
Start assessment
Starship will first launch on its Super Heavy booster from Texas on April 20, 2023.
SpaceX
The Starship flight stepped off the launch pad and reached several milestones, but Musk gave more details about several problems the rocket had.
The rocket took off with only 30 of the 33 Raptor engines ignited at the base of the Super Heavy booster. Musk said SpaceX “chose not to start three engines” because they weren’t “healthy enough to bring them up to full power. Starship slid sideways off the launch pad as it climbed into the air, which Musk said was “because of the engine failures. “
About 27 seconds into flight, SpaceX “lost communication” with another engine — an incident that occurred “with some kind of energetic event” involving the removal of the heat shield around several other engines. “Things really hit the fan” about 85 seconds after launch, when SpaceX lost “thrust vector control” — or the ability to steer the rocket.
In addition, Musk reported that it took about 40 seconds for the rocket’s AFTS (Autonomous Flight Termination System, which destroys the vehicle if it flies off course) to kick in, which SpaceX needs to correct for the next launch attempt.
The strongest part of the rocket’s performance was how well it held together, including passing a launch milestone called “Max Q,” or the time when atmospheric pressure is strongest on the rocket.
“The structural margins of the vehicle seem to be better than we expected, as we can see from the fact that the vehicle actually flips towards the end and still remains intact,” Musk said.
Looking ahead, Musk said SpaceX has “made so many improvements” to future prototypes. The company has to make sure “we don’t lose thrust control” on the next launch.
‘Rock Tornado’
Members of the public walk through a debris field near the launch pad on April 22, 2023, after the SpaceX Starship lifted off for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on April 20.
Patrick T Fallon | Afp | Getty Images
Back on the ground, Musk said the booster created a “rock tornado” under the rocket as it lifted off. While SpaceX “has seen no evidence that the rock tornado actually damaged engines or heat shields in any material way,” Musk noted that the company “certainly didn’t expect” to destroy the launch pad’s concrete and create a crater in its wake.
“One of the more plausible explanations is that … we compressed the sand under the concrete in such a way that the concrete effectively bent and then cracked,” Musk said.
A priority for the next flight is to have the 33 Raptor engines “start faster and get off the pad faster,” Musk said. It took SpaceX about five seconds to fire up the engines and launch the rocket, which Musk noted “takes a really long time to fire the pad.” The company aims to cut that time in half for the next attempt.
A cloud of dust grows beneath Starship as the rocket launches from Texas on its Super Heavy booster on April 20, 2023.
SpaceX
Photos of the aftermath have shown the violent result of the Super Heavy booster’s engines. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report said the launch threw concrete and metal “thousands of feet,” creating a cloud of dust and pulverized concrete that fell as far as 6.5 miles from the launch site.
On Saturday, Musk said that “the brake pad damage is actually quite minor” and “needs to be fixed quickly.” He estimated that the necessary repairs mean that SpaceX will “probably be ready to launch in six to eight weeks.” SpaceX will replace some of the propellant tanks near the launch pad. The 150-meter tower “is in good condition”, with “no significant damage”, even though it was hit by “some pretty big chunks of concrete”.
Musk believes the biggest hurdle to flying again is “probably requalification” of the AFTS that destroyed the missile, as “it took way too long” to explode.
SpaceX is moving forward with a plan to place steel plates, which will be cooled by a water system, under the launch tower for the next Starship rocket.
Environmentalists and researchers have raised the alarm about the cloud of pulverized concrete and dust that caused the launch. Musk argued that the debris was “not toxic at all” but said that “we don’t want to do that again.”
“To our knowledge, there has been no significant environmental damage that we are aware of,” Musk said.
(TagsToTranslate)Environment
