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Elon Musk has provided several new, rare, and rare glimpses of how his rocket company, SpaceX, is building a spaceship to reach Mars.
On Sept. 17, Musk announced that SpaceX will drive Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon on the Big Falcon Rocket or the company's BFR. During this event, Musk presented new renditions of the launch system, as well as some photos of the work being done inside the SpaceX tent in the Los Angeles harbor.
These are the first new details regarding the construction of the SpaceX rocket that we had obtained since April, when Musk posted a photo that revealed that SpaceX was building the spacecraft with the help of a 40-foot cylindrical tool long and 30 feet wide.
"The main SpaceX tool for the BFR interplanetary spacecraft," said Musk on Instagram.
Aerospace industry experts say new published images reveal new information on how SpaceX is building the BFR and how fast the project is evolving.
"It is unusual for companies and even government agencies developing rockets to reveal a lot about the hardware they develop, but Musk wants to bring the audience with him," said Marco Cáceres, senior analyst at Teal Group. , said Business Insider. "He lives and breathes this business, so when he has passionate material, he just wants to show it and be as transparent as possible."
What the new BFR manufacturing images reveal
The BFR is designed to be a 39-stage launch system consisting of two parts: a 180-foot-tall, end-to-end spacecraft, and a 230-foot high rocket booster (which the ship travels in orbit) . Musk said that the spacecraft was the "most difficult part" of the system to build, so SpaceX prototyped it first.
Musk's vision is to launch the spacecraft into orbit and refuel it by turning around the Earth. Then the ship can start its engines, fly in space, land on Mars and, later, take off from this planet and return to Earth. Since it is designed to be 100% reusable, the system will be expected to do this many times.
Musk said in 2016 that SpaceX is building the system "primarily from an advanced carbon fiber", which is about as solid as steel at one-fifth of the weight.
One of the new images that Musk shared on September 17 shows a spoke tube with a worker inside. This is the inside of the cylindrical tool that Musk revealed in March; this is what is called a mandrel. Robots roll a layer of carbon fiber tape over the mandrel to form a 30-foot-wide "gun section" of the spacecraft.
The carbon fibers are dipped in a glue-like epoxy and heated to harden and harden the composite.
The photo below, which Musk also revealed on September 17, shows a barrel section that has been healed and released from the mandrel. The rounded dome on the left seems to be part of a propellant tank also made of carbon fiber.
Many carbon fiber ribbons are woven. But Steve Nutt, a professor of chemical, aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Southern California, told Business Insider he thought the SpaceX engineers were wrapping the chuck in a non-woven version of the tape.
Nutt stated that such non-woven tapes provide the "highest stiffness and strength" because they do not bend easily or fold (which can weaken a structure). They also maximize the amount of super-resistant carbon fiber compared to the epoxy, he said.
Nutt said that it was "smart enough what they do".
The carbon fiber needs to be pressed while it is heated and hardened, so Nutt thinks that SpaceX could use very large plastic bags and suck the air to compress the layers of duct tape. But he does not know how SpaceX actually heats the rooms.
"The structures are getting too big to bake, so they could use 'warming blankets,'" he said.
"He's doing all this on NASA's face"
Cáceres, who has studied the aerospace industry for decades, said the new photos highlight a project of epic proportions.
"It's probably the biggest challenge I've seen since Saturn V, in terms of engineering," said Cáceres, referring to NASA's lunar rocket. "Nothing that I've seen is remote from this size."
Even New Glenn, a reusable heavy rocket built by billionaire billionaire Blue Origin rocket company, does not compare, he said.
The revelation of these images forces the public – and potential investors – to take Musk seriously, Cáceres said.
Cáceres previously estimated that the BFR development program could cost around $ 5 billion, and Musk gave the same estimate when he announced Maezawa's role in SpaceX's lunar tourism mission.
"He's looking for investors because it's not Jeff Bezos, who could probably do it alone," Cáceres said. "Musk is not as rich – he can look for investors by building and showing things – if you see how much material he has and how big it is, people will say," Yes, it's a serious program ".
If the lunar mission 2023 aboard BFR – a project that Maezawa calls # dearMoon – succeeds, it would send a big message to NASA about SpaceX's capabilities.
"It does not look like a shot," Cáceres said. "It sounds like a try."
SpaceX has secured billions of dollars in funding from NASA through the agency's commercial crew program, which aims to partner with private companies to build a launch system for the NASA. astronauts at the International Space Station. It would therefore be logical for Musk to try again to attract the attention (and money) of NASA for the development of BFR.
At present, NASA is building a giant single-use launcher called Space Launch System, which could cost more than $ 20 billion to develop and priced at about $ 1 billion per launch. Meanwhile, the SpaceX BFR could cost the company tens of millions of dollars to refuel and launch once the spacecraft is operational.
"In a way, he jostled NASA saying," You're crazy to build this rocket, "Cáceres said of Musk and SLS, respectively. "Elon Musk is a very charismatic figure and showman who understands that for many years NASA has been trying to spark the public's craze for space exploration and is still trying to recreate the excitement around Apollo. . "
Musk, meanwhile, may be fighting NASA for this purpose.
"The thing Musk is building is like a sci-fi movie, it wants to excite the public, and this excitement can attract investors," said Cáceres.
If SpaceX does not attract NASA funding for the development of BFR, the company could rely on space tourism, contracts with the government and commercial interests to launch cargo and satellites, and enjoy the constellation from 12,000 satellites ambitious bills.
"People can not say," Musk, that's all. "He has accomplished so much in a short time," said Cáceres. "When I was at trade shows 10 years ago, when I asked Boeing and others to talk about SpaceX, they rolled their eyes and said:" They will not be here very long. "Now, SpaceX is the major player in the industry."
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