[ad_1]
Getting astronauts to the Moon is no easy feat, and it takes a disgusting amount of rocket fuel to get there.
With its fuel tanks filled to the brim, NASA’s Saturn V rocket weighed 6.5 million pounds during the Apollo missions nearly half a century ago. He managed to burn 20 tons of rocket fuel – every second.
Fast forward decades, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is trying to achieve similar grandeur with his space company’s Starship rocket. This time around, it will take a lot of refueling to get there.
SpaceX competitor Blue Origin recently moaned that SpaceX might need 16 launches to get to the moon.
But “16 thefts are extremely unlikely,” Musk retorted in a wednesday tweet. “The payload of the orbiting spacecraft is [about] 150 tons, so a maximum of 8 to fill the tanks of 1200 tons of lunar vessel.
“Without flaps or a heat shield, Starship is much lighter,” Musk continued. “The lunar landing legs don’t add much (gravity 1/6). May only need 1/2 full, i.e. 4 tanker flights.
And even if it took 16 launches, Musk said, that wouldn’t be a problem.
“However, even if it was 16 moored flights, this is not a problem,” he added in a statement. follow-up tweet. “SpaceX made more than 16 orbital flights in the first half of 2021 and docked at the Station (much more difficult than docking with our own ship) more than 20 times.”
Still, launching Starship and its gigantic Super Heavy rocket stage is a much, much bigger undertaking than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket – and even its much more powerful Falcon Heavy.
This raises another key question: whether Musk implies that astronauts would have to wait six months in orbit for their journey to the moon to refuel.
The complexities involved are staggering. On the one hand, the first stage of the Falcon 9 only integrates nine Merlin engines. The Super Heavy booster alone will use 29 much larger Raptor engines.
The space company has yet to complete its first orbital test launch involving the spacecraft and its thruster.
But such a launch may not be that far away. SpaceX recently stacked a prototype spacecraft on top of a Super Heavy rocket stage for the first time in preparation for the booster’s maiden voyage.
If all goes well, Starship will go orbital before the end of summer.
Only then will SpaceX be able to tackle the next obstacle in its Moonshot journey: a refueling in space, involving two Starships.
More on Starship: Elon Musk-approved render shows two spaceships, uh, exchanging fluids
[ad_2]
Source link