“Success perhaps, excitement guaranteed!”: Musk tests his super rocket for the first time

On Friday evening, the long-awaited launch permit came in: The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave Elon Musk’s private aerospace company SpaceX the green light to conduct the first full test of the Starship system.

The individual components have already been successfully tested independently of each other – with some failures, as usual in space travel. The first flight into orbit of the reusable heavy rocket was originally scheduled for September 2022, but has been postponed several times.

Now it should work. Musk himself thinks there is a 50 percent chance that Starship will enter orbit. “Success perhaps, excitement guaranteed!” he tweeted accordingly. The 150-minute test window will open at 2 p.m. Swiss time on Monday. According to SpaceX, a live broadcast of the test flight will begin 45 minutes before the test flight.

We don’t skimp on superlatives

When it comes to Starship, experts don’t skimp on superlatives: you read and hear phrases like super spaceship, paradigm shift, giant leap for humanity. What causes this enthusiasm? The most important questions and answers about Musk’s powerful rocket.

How does the test flight work?

The rocket behemoth will lift off from the company’s SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, South Texas, with a launch weight of 5,000 tons. The system consists of two parts: launcher and spacecraft. The rocket, the so-called Super Heavy, is equipped with 33 engines and is intended to take the space shuttle, the actual Starship with six engines of its own, into space. The system works with liquid methane and oxygen.

For the test flight, the Super Heavy is supposed to ignite for a few minutes and then detach from Starship after 2 minutes and 52 seconds. Super Heavy is then scheduled to make a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico, while Starship completes a nearly full orbit around the world. If all goes according to plan, Starship will land vertically in the ocean north of the Hawaiian Islands.

This means that controlled interception of the reusable missile system on land, as originally planned, is not yet planned for this test. There are also no loads being transported.

How big is Starship?

The lower stage, the Super Heavy, is 69 meters long, the upper stage Starship 50 meters. All together, the vehicle measures 119 meters. For comparison, the Prime Tower in Zurich is 126 meters high. The record for the largest rocket is currently held by the US space agency NASA’s Saturn V, which was used to carry astronauts to the moon. She reached a height of 111 meters.

Meanwhile, the European launch vehicle, Ariane 5, is only 50 meters long. It took off for the last time last Friday when it successfully piloted the Juice spacecraft on its journey to the Jovian system. Its successor, Ariane 6, will be about 60 meters long.

How powerful is Starship?

Starship will generate a launch thrust of more than 7,700 tons, more than twice that of the currently most powerful heavy rocket. This is currently still the Boeing-built SLS lunar rocket, which first flew to the moon last November as an unmanned test capsule as part of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission.

The space shuttle Starship can accommodate up to 100 people. The volume of usable space is no less than 1000 cubic meters – large enough for a dismantled Eiffel Tower. The payload is 100 to 150 tons. At an event, Musk once explained that a single Starship, departing three times a week, can carry more than 15,000 tons of cargo in a year. That is as much as all cargo transported in the history of space travel.

Why is Starship cheaper than other rockets?

SpaceX’s recycling concept is revolutionary, and with it Musk has already succeeded in massively reducing the cost of space travel – by at least a factor of 10. With Falcon, the team developed a reusable rocket for satellite launches and cargo missions to the International Space Station ISS . The concept is now being transferred to the Starship spacecraft.

One day, the rocket stage could be caught by the launch pad tower in Boca Chica and land vertically on the ground. Starship should also be able to land on Earth and start over after its job is done.

In addition, Musk is now using a stainless steel alloy when building the Starship system – a paradigm shift in space travel. Initially, SpaceX wanted to use carbon composites, but they are many times more expensive. Aluminum alloy, a common material for launchers, is also significantly more expensive.

How much does a Starship flight cost?

Musk has not disclosed the exact start-up costs for Starship. But if SpaceX’s predictions are to be believed, the cost per kilo of cargo could reach $10, according to Science magazine. By comparison, the SLS rocket used for Artemis 1 costs $58,000 per kilogram.

Some experts estimate that a single launch of Artemis will cost about $4.1 billion in total. According to Musk, a Starship flight could cost a few million dollars in the future, or maybe just $1 million.

What tasks should Starship take over one day?

According to the SpaceX company, Starship will carry both people and cargo to Earth orbit, to the moon, to Mars and beyond.

First of all, as part of the Dear Moon mission, the first nine space tourists are planned to be sent on a sightseeing flight to the moon at the end of 2023. Japanese billionaire and art collector Yusaku Maezawa finances the six-day trip, flies with them and gives eight artists a ride-along ticket. NASA has also expressed interest in Starship and signed a contract with SpaceX for a manned lunar landing by 2025.

However, it’s no secret that the moon is just a stopover and training ground for Musk. His goal is Mars, where he dreams of an outpost for humanity. To save civilization from extinction, he wants to make humans a multiplanetary species.

Loaded with less drama, it sounds from the world of science, but thanks to Starship, it also expects missions as extravagant as they were hard to imagine before. With the super rocket, larger and heavier scientific instruments could be transported into space and to other celestial bodies. And because Starship must return to Earth safely, large quantities of samples can also be analyzed in Earth laboratories. (aargauerzeitung.ch)