Elon Musk plans to drag out civilization over to mars(apart from his other tricky jobs) and for that, he has been developing a pioneering interplanetary vessel, called Starship, and also has been launching at a very rapid rate. We are going to explore almost everything about the Starship rocket in this article.
Musk, in an interview with podcast host ‘Joe Rogan’ discussed the thought processes behind his signature rocket, he told Rogan that he watched a comedy show called ‘The Dictator’ in which the leader of a fictional nation orders his engineers to make a rocket pointier to strike fear into the heart of his enemies." and actually that’s the same thing I said" Musk told Rogan. When asked if the pointy rocket will also be more aerodynamic, Musk said “The design of the rocket is slightly worse. Still, everyone thought it would be funny if we make it pointy so, we did".
Apart from Starship being pointy, like high tech sci-fi rockets, it is also very shiny because it is made up of stainless steel. This is for several reasons as musk himself said "it is obviously cheap and obviously fast”(in terms of production)
Source-spacex
Expense is another factor because carbon fiber usually used to make rockets cost $135/kg whereas stainless steel costs $3/kg, stainless steel also has a high melting point, an obvious advantage for rockets. Carbon Fiber can stand 300° F of heat whereas stainless steel can comfortably get up to 1500° F without melting and when you consider SpaceX’s choice of fuel is Methane and Liquid oxygen, Stainless Steel gives the additional benefit of not turning brittle at ultra-low temperatures.
So what’s inside starship?
Starting with the nose cone, we find the payload component there, now, it is found to be empty but on larger missions, be filled out by a multifunction cargo bay and alternatively, it can transport 100 people to mars in one flight. A clip shot by Elon Musk himself, shows a spherical design known as header tank, but the tesla battery packs also spotted in the clip are worth talking about. For landing, Starship uses wing flaps and earth’s atmosphere, simultaneously, unlike its Falcon cousin rocket. This is when the Tesla batteries come in handy, they are used to power the wing flaps. Musk says "you are trying to create drag instead of lift just opposite of an aircraft".
Elon Musk shared this video on twitter
Credit- Elon Musk\"s twiter
Below the nosecone, we have the liquid methane tank and then, the liquid oxygen tank.
This fuel mixture was chosen because of several reasons. It is less dense and hence less weighty than using hydrogen. It also burns clean, which is crucial when you are hoping to re-use rocket. Also, thanks to the discovery of ice on Mars, future missions can apply a process called Sabatier process, to generate Methox fuel on the Red planet itself.
The two fuel tanks in starship contain 1,200 tonnes of fuel, separated by a hemisphere called common dome.
Back to the sphere called a header tank, it holds a separate supply of liquid oxygen and methane, these supplies are only used in the landing when the rocket has used up the main fuel. This step was crucial for the Starship because Elon blamed the low fuel in the fuel tank for SN8 crash and burn, which was launched back in December.
The engines themselves are SpaceX’s raptors, only three for now, for sea level, but future missions will have 6 raptors, with the additional three optimised for Vacuum conditions, the additional engines will have larger 2.8M diameter, compared to the smaller ones of 1.3M, sea level versions. “History is going to bifurcate along two directions”, Elon Musk said in an Starship conference.”One path is we stay on forever, and the there will be some eventual extinction event.” the alternative is to become a space-faring civilisation and a multi planet species.
What are your thoughts on Elon musk’s Ideology ? Let us know in the comments below!
Here is a video compilation of all the Starship launches and vertical landings - video compilation
And one more thing before ending this blog here are some Elon Musk memes.
Credit for blog goes to Sparsh Gupta
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