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SpaceX Starship


Starship is a space rocket made of stainless steel and can be used many times. It is created by the American company SpaceX. By far, it is the biggest and most power rocket in the world. Starship is made of two rocket stages: a Super Heavy booster and a Starship spacecraft. Both of them create thrust using Raptor rocket engines. The engines themselves burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen.

SpaceX Starship
Photograph of a steel rocket facing backward on a launch mount
Photograph of the top of a steel booster inside a construction bay
Starship spacecraft SN16 and Super Heavy booster BN4

Starship might be able to launch things to space at a lower cost. The rocket can lift up to 100 t (220,000 lb) into space, with a huge cabin to store them. Furthermore, both the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft can be used many times. Because of these reasons, Starship will be used in the Artemis program and in many other space programs. However, SpaceX's goal for the rocket is to help humans explore and colonize Mars.

SpaceX first drafted a rocket like Starship in 2005. However, the company started testing Starship in 2016, more than 10 years later. In July 2019, a tester vehicle fired its Raptor engines for the first time. In December 2020, the first Starship flew and tried to land but crashed. The first rocket is going to fly into orbit sometime in early 2022.

Situation

People have made many plans to send humans to Mars since at least the 1940s. However, none of these plans have been seriously thought about. This is partly because technology at the have not been developed enough. Mars is extremely difficult to live on, with an atmosphere 2% the thickness of Earth's atmosphere at the top of the Mount Everest. Another reason is the difficult politics[what does this mean?] of these countries. Even so, in the 21st century, many organizations have promised to send humans to Mars.[1]

Sending things to space is very expensive and prevented the space economy to grow.[2] The space economy includes building, launching, and making use of satellites.[3] Even more so, launch companies did not compete to lower their cost, because they are guaranteed to be selected. This prevents further competition, creating a endless loop to the situation.[4] This loop only broke in the early 2010s, when newer companies entered the industry.[2] Examples of these companies and their rockets include SpaceX's Falcon 9, Rocket Lab's Electron, and Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne.[5]

SpaceX had tried very hard to recover their rockets to launch them again. SpaceX first tried to attach parachutes on the Falcon 9 rocket stages, but failed. The parachutes were destroyed after the rockets entered the atmosphere.[6] After multiple tries, SpaceX decided to only land Falcon 9's first stage using its rocket engines, and gave up recovering the second stage.[7] These efforts were then transferred to Starship in order to recover both stages.[8]

Design

 
The Raptor rocket engine, which is designed to be used inside an atmosphere

Starship is 9 m (30 ft) wide and 120 m (390 ft) high,[9] 9 m (30 ft) taller than the Saturn V.[10] The rocket is made of stainless steel, with two rocket stages: Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft.[11] Starship as a whole can launch 100 t (220,000 lb) to low Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars. At the same time, both the booster and spacecraft can be used again.[12]

Raptor is only rocket engine Starship uses. The rocket engine burns methane and oxygen, because the fuel is cheaper and can be made on Mars.[13]

Uses

Sites

History

References

  1. ↑ Greshko, Michael (2015-11-11). "Here's Why There's Still Not a Human on Mars". National Geographic. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 2021-12-19.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Weinzierl, Matthew (2018). "Space, the Final Economic Frontier". The Journal of Economic Perspectives. American Economic Association. 32 (2): 174. doi:10.1257/jep.32.2.173. JSTOR 26409430. Archived from the original on 1 September 2021. Retrieved 24 November 2021 – via JSTOR.
  3. ↑ Claire Jolly; Gohar Razi; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2007). The space economy at a glance: 2007. OECD Publishing. p. 48. ISBN 978-92-64-03109-8. Retrieved 9 June 2011.
  4. ↑ Worden, Simon P.; Sponable, Jess (2006-09-22). "Access to Space: A Strategy for the Twenty-First Century". Astropolitics. 4 (1): 69–83. Bibcode:2006AstPo...4...69W. doi:10.1080/14777620600762857. S2CID 145293511. Archived from the original on 13 October 2019. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  5. ↑ Zimmerman, Robert (1 February 2017). "Capitalism in Space: Private Enterprise and Competition Reshape the Global Aerospace Launch Industry". Center for a New American Security: 21. JSTOR resrep06111. Archived from the original on 24 November 2021. Retrieved 26 November 2021.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  6. ↑ Bergin, Chris (2009-01-12). "Musk ambition: SpaceX aim for fully reusable Falcon 9" (in en-US). NASASpaceFlight.com. https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/01/musk-ambition-spacex-aim-for-fully-reusable-falcon-9/. Retrieved 2021-11-24. 
  7. ↑ Chang, Kenneth (2013-08-15). "Latest SpaceX Rocket Test Successfully Goes Sideways" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/science/space/latest-spacex-rocket-test-successfully-goes-sideways.html. Retrieved 2021-12-13. 
  8. ↑ Hanry, Caleb (2017-11-21). "SpaceX aims to follow a banner year with an even faster 2018 launch cadence". SpaceNews. http://spacenews.com/spacex-aims-to-follow-a-banner-year-with-an-even-faster-2018-launch-cadence/. Retrieved 2018-01-15. 
  9. ↑ "Starship page". SpaceX. Archived from the original on 22 May 2020. Retrieved 24 September 2021.
  10. ↑ (15 September 1967) Technical information summary AS-501 Apollo Saturn V flight vehicle . Marshall Space Flight Center: NASA, 6. Report.
  11. ↑ "Elon Musk renames his BFR spacecraft Starship" (in en-GB). BBC News. 20 November 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46274158. Retrieved 2021-11-22. 
  12. ↑ Berger, Eric (2020-03-31). "SpaceX releases a Payload User's Guide for its Starship rocket". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 20 April 2021. Retrieved 2021-12-08.
  13. ↑ Nast, Condé (31 July 2019). "The wild physics of Elon Musk's methane-guzzling super-rocket" (in en-GB). Wired UK. ISSN 1357-0978 . https://www.wired.co.uk/article/spacex-raptor-engine-starship. Retrieved 2021-12-09. 
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