This week, SpaceX's X (formerly Twitter) account posted a recording of a presentation recently held at the company's Starbase, located in Boca Chica, Texas. The presentation was made by the head of SpaceX, Elon Musk, who during his speech talked about the future test flights of the Starship spacecraft and the company's plans to organize an autonomous human colony on Mars in the future.
The billionaire said that the fourth test flight of the Starship system is planned "in about a month or so". This is consistent with an earlier statement by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who said as recently as last month that the next Starship flight is scheduled for early May and will depend on whether the company manages to obtain a new launch permit from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). .
If the company can stick to the given schedule, the fourth test flight will take place less than two months after the previous launch. The main purpose of the test is to make the Starship's booster unit able to pass the "high heat mode" upon entering the atmosphere and "fall in a controlled manner" into the ocean. It will be recalled that during the third flight of the Starship system, the spacecraft was lost a few minutes after entering the atmosphere.
Musk also said that the next flight of Starship will be connected with the development of the technology of landing the Super Heavy launch vehicle. As part of the fourth test launch, SpaceX will try to land the carrier on a virtual tower in the Gulf of Mexico. This will be another step on the way to practicing the controlled landing of a giant rocket.
Musk noted that in the event of a successful landing of the carrier on the "virtual tower" during the fourth test flight, SpaceX will try to carry out a real landing of the accelerator next time, which will be captured by the manipulators of "Mekhazil" - a special tower-catcher for carrier rockets. . "The probability that this year we will be able to catch a launch vehicle with the help of Mehazila's manipulators is 80% to 90%," the billionaire said. He also noted that it will take more time to restore the Starship before it can be used again, and the company intends to conduct at least two successful manned drives of the vehicle in the ocean before attempting to land it on the Starbase. According to Musk, next year SpaceX will be able to reuse the Starship ship in one of the space flights.
In parallel, the company is working on expanding production to support a tighter launch schedule in the future. Along with the new Starship rocket production facility, the company is constructing a second launch tower at Starbase and expects to have another launch tower at Cape Canaveral in Florida by the middle of next year. SpaceX also plans to make six Super Heavy boosters this year. "We should probably expect to be doing research and development launches here, testing new things, building rockets, and then probably most of the operational launches will be from the Cape," Musk said during his speech.
In addition, SpaceX is working on improving the Raptor engines, which are used not only in the Super Heavy accelerator, but also in the Starship itself. According to Musk, the improved Raptor 3 engines will be able to produce up to 280 metric tons of thrust compared to the 230 produced by the current generation engines. Ultimately, SpaceX expects to improve the engines so that they can produce more than 300 tons of thrust. Such engines are planned to be used with a more powerful rocket and ship Starship 2, which will allow to deliver more than 100 tons of cargo into orbit. And the whole system will be completely reusable. The future Starship 3 will be able to launch more than 200 metric tons of cargo into space and will be reusable. At the same time, the businessman did not specify when exactly the company plans to start operating more advanced Starship ships.
Despite this, the businessman is sure that the launch of Starship 3 will cost less than the original SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket, the price of which was about $10 million. This will be facilitated by the possibility of using the system multiple times. According to the billionaire's estimates, the cost of launching Starship in the future may be from $2 to $3 million. "These are kind of unimaginable numbers. No one ever thought it was possible. However, to achieve this goal, we will not have to violate the laws of physics," said Musk.
The businessman did not miss the topic of the colonization of Mars. According to him, the flight to the Red Planet requires six refueling of the Starship in orbit. For this purpose, it is planned to work out the technology of space refueling using a special apparatus with fuel, which will be in the orbit of the Earth and with which the Starship will dock before the flight to Mars. It was also said that for a successful landing of a ship on the surface of the Red Planet, the landing pads should be placed in the lowlands to provide enough atmosphere to slow down the descent. In addition, they must be located close to the equator, as an autonomous human base on Mars must receive enough sunlight to generate the necessary amount of energy.
As for return flights, according to Musk, many people who decide to fly to Mars will not return to Earth. However, SpaceX's long-term goal is to allow people to travel between planets in the future. The company also intends to build significantly more ships than boosters. This is because the ships will most likely be reused on Mars for resource extraction.
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