In a presentation on September 28, Elon Musk said that he is aiming at taking his Starship spacecraft into the orbit in under 6 months.
“This is going to sound totally nuts, but I think we want to try to reach orbit in less than six months,” Musk said. “Provided the rate of design improvement and manufacturing improvement continues to be exponential, I think that is accurate to within a few months.”
He also said that the prototype of Starship will be able to do controlled ‘hops’ up to the height of 65,000 feet. This is the first milestone he is aiming at.
The second one is the orbit.
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Starship can lift a payload of 150 tones
The presentation at SpaceX’s testing facility near Boca Chica, Texas, displayed some renders of the Starship.
According to the renders, it has a length of 50 meters and a diameter of 9 meters. It can lift a payload of 150 tons.
It will be launched by a rocket of the name Super Heavy in the space. The Super Heavy is 9 meters diameter too along with a length of 68 meters.
Starship will be the most powerful rocket in history, capable of carrying humans to the Moon, Mars, and beyond pic.twitter.com/LloN8AQdei
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 29, 2019
The Super Heavy will be able to contain up to 37 Raptor engines, according to Musk. But, he added, “I’m not sure we’ll go that high.” Musk said the number of engines could vary depending on the mission, and indicated that the minimum number of engines for the booster could be about 24.
The material used for the construction of the Starship was changed from carbon fiber to steek this year.
The design of the Starship has evolved through a series of testing and development since the time it was originally announced in 2017.
Starship will be used to transport humans to planets
Elon explained how Starship will use its in-space refilling propellant by docking with tanker Starships which will be already there in the orbit.
It will do so to transfer fuel. All this fuel is needed to make the journey from Earth to either Moon or Mars.
These will include supplies for building bases on planetary surfaces, as well as up to 100 passengers on long-haul planet-to-planet flights.
The Starship Mk1, Mk2, and the forthcoming Mk3 and Mk4 orbital testers will have a fin design.
The fin design will help them enter Earth’s atmosphere horizontally to increase drag and reduce their velocity.
The front fins on the Starship prototype will help orient it for re-entry, a key component of reuse.
Design of the Super-Heavy
The booster, Super Heavy is a liquid-oxygen powered rocket. Its height is about 1.5 times the height of the Starship and has 37 raptor engines.
The Starship, on the other hand, has 6 raptor engines.
Super Heavy has 6 standing legs and deployable grid fins for its return journey to Earth.
Musk said that SpaceX will be “building both ships and boosters here [at Boca Chica] and the Cape as fast as we can,” and that they’ve already been improving both the design and the manufacture of the sections for the spacecraft “exponentially” as a result of the competition.
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The post Starship Will Be in the Orbit in 6 Months, Says Elon Musk appeared first on GarimaShares.
