—Is it a giant lighter? A flying water tank? Upside down lightsaber? The answer may surprise you if you don’t know the latest events in Boca Chica. It is the spaceship (or a prototype spaceship) with which the billionaire Elon Musk wants to take us to Mars.
After three implosions and a big bangThe prototype of starship number 5 made the first 150-meter flight since the Starhopper (a much smaller and lighter prototype) took to the skies on Tuesday.
The SN5 is an incomplete test vehicle, which worsens the seems untouched of the Starship: a cheap ship that is manufactured in series, in the open air, with stainless steel coils and more or less rudimentary techniques.
The 30-meter prototype did not have the upper cone and took off without control surfaces (the movable ailerons that will allow the later prototypes to stabilize during the landing maneuver). It had two 20-ton steel coils on top (as ballast to compensate for the lack of fuel) and had a single Raptor engine (the SN27) in an asymmetric position.
It was not a problem: the ship controlled the flight to perfection and advanced towards the landing platform automatically unfolding its six legs before touching the ground (Elon Musk says that the final legs will be longer).
But the flight was not perfect. There were at least two incidents that SpaceX has not mentioned, but which can be seen in the images. At the time of ignition and takeoff, some of the ground facilities blew up (although they did not look like large chunks, not even from the ship itself). The camera inside the thruster then revealed that the Raptor engine was on fire before landing, which on a longer flight could have been a problem.
In any case, it was a major milestone for SpaceX and the images it leaves us are worthy of a wallpaper, if only for the surreal appearance of the Starship towering over the Texas coast.
There will be more flights soon: the SN6 prototype is already assembled, the SN7 was sacrificed for a pressurization test, and the SN8 has started production. The SN8 will have to be watched: it will be the first prototype made of 304L steel (better alloy than current prototypes) and will come with three Raptor engines and the aerodynamic surfaces necessary to perform flights of up to 20 km. , one last jump before the suborbital flights.
Once tested, the Starship will become the first fully reusable space rocket, a concept that opens the door to 30-minute intercontinental flights and which (in combination with a super-heavy propellant) could make space exploration cheaper than ever. .
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