We all know about Elon Musk’s dream of making human civilization on Mars and make humans a multi-planetary species. So, Starship is the spacecraft designed to take people to Moon and Mars one day. So, Starship is vital in the path to make humans, a multi-planetary species. Today, we briefly discuss basic information about the Starship rocket and ready to fly “SN8” Starship prototype.
Starship
Starship is a fully reusable and two-stage to orbit rocket. SpaceX embarked on the development of this heavy-lift launch vehicle in 2012. This two-stage spacecraft will be constructed with stainless steel. Starship will sit atop the first stage, Super Heavy booster. Super Heavy booster is actually a more advanced and giant Falcon 9 booster. So, SpaceX will not have to do much more newly on experiments on that as they usually and more often launch and reuse Falcon 9 booster.
So, the upper stage is the real challenge to SpaceX. It will be 9m in diameter, 50m tall with a dry mass of 120 tons or less. The original Starship will be powered by 6 raptor engines. 3 of them are sea-level engines that an adjustable and will use at sea-level. The other 3 are vacuum engines and will use in the space. Spacecraft will use “Reaction Control Thrusters (RCT)” to maneuver in space. Starship is designed with 3 flaps on the bottom. 2 of them will work as air brakes. And another 2 flaps will be located on top. These 2 flaps are also named “Canard fins”.
Landing of the Starship
When we coming to the landing of Starship, it will enter into the Earth’s atmosphere from space as a skydiver. Starship will use flaps and canard fins and will fire raptor engines to reduce the speed of the spacecraft and to begin the “bellyflop” maneuver. Then Reaction Control thrusters will help to direct and stabilize to adjust the rotation to a vertical position for landing. Then starship will do a propulsive landing as Falcon 9 and will land smoothly by deploying 6 landing legs.
Launch of the SN8
SpaceX aims to make a big step forward by launching their next prototype of Starship, SN8 (Serial No.8) on this December. The SN8 will be the first fully assembled Starship prototype and more likely to the original design. For the first time, 3 methane fueled Raptor engines and aerodynamics flaps will be tested during the 15km test flight as previous prototypes only had 1 engine and only flown into 150m into the air. And SN8 still will not have 3 vacuum engines as it would not fly into space.
“Aiming for first 15km / ~50k ft altitude flight next week. Goals are to test 3 engine ascent, body flaps, transition from main to header tanks & landing flip.”, Musk tweeted on November 25 following the successful static fire test of Starship SN8.
But the landing of the Starship rocket is not ensured. Musk also confirmed low odds of succeeding the landing in the first attempt in a reply to CNBC space reporter Michael Sheetz on Twitter. “Lot of things need to go right, so maybe 1/3 chance. But that’s why we have SN 9 & SN10”.
SN8 will launch from Boca Chica, Texas where SpaceX assembling and testing Starship prototypes. Musk recently shared SN8 launch would take place “no earlier than Wednesday” on Twitter. But Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published a NOTAM notice on 2nd December which insists, that SpaceX informed FAA, they plan to launch SN8 sometime from December 4 to December 6. But we just heard the launch has slipped to December 7. But it’s still to confirm by SpaceX. Anyway, the launch will take place ASAP, and we hope it would be at least before December 15.
So it’s all for now. Inventho is the website talking about Science, Technology, Space, and Inspirational stories. Stay tuned with us by subscribing to our website or Facebook page.
