SpaceX’s Starship

SpaceX’s Starship

Context: SpaceX’s Starship rocket accomplished its first fully successful test flight. This was SpaceX’s fourth attempt to launch the Starship. The Starship’s booster (called Super Heavy) was detached from the upper section (or the Starship spacecraft) to make a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Starship

• Starship is a two-stage heavy lift-off vehicle designed to carry crew and/or cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond. It is nearly 120 metres tall, making it the largest rocket ever flown.
• The Super Heavy booster consists of 33 Raptor engines that can produce 74 meganewtons of thrust.
• NASA’s biggest currently-operational rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), generates 39 meganewtons off the pad.
• These Raptor engines use a 3.6:1 ratio of liquid oxygen (the oxidiser, a chemical that reacts with the fuel to cause combustion) and liquid methane (the fuel).
• According to SpaceX, the Super Heavy will be fully reusable and capable of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere after a mission to land at the launch site.
• The Starship spacecraft, comprising six Raptor engines and four landing fins, is also fully reusable.

Reducing the cost of space travel

• More payload carrying capacity per trip will lower the costs. Further, with the refuelling capacity of Starship’s upper stage, spacecraft can instead be designed for increased payload capacity, thereby fundamentally increasing their value-generating potential.
• The Starship rocket system is designed to be entirely and rapidly reusable.
• Even NASA’s reusable Space Shuttle spacecraft used a disposable external fuel tank and reusable thrusters, which had to be recovered from the sea, examined, and refurbished, causing delays.
• However, SpaceX needs to prove that Starship is safe and reliable while keeping costs low, as it promised. Moreover, progress has been slower than expected.