SpaceX is preparing to launch its latest Starship prototype tens of thousands of feet into the air as early as this week.
The challenge is getting it to land on the ground again – that maneuver ended in explosion both times, both times the company tried it before. This time, SpaceX founder Elon Musk estimated that the prototype has a 60 percent chance of a successful landing.
The prototype represents the top stage of a two-piece system: eventually, an approximately 23-story booster called Super Heavy would put the spaceship’s spaceship into orbit. Musk’s long-term vision is that the system will one day fly astronauts to the moon and enable hypersonic travel on Earth. He has said he plans to build 1,000 spaceships to transport people and cargo to Mars.
But first, SpaceX needs to figure out how to land the rocket, because that’s crucial to making the system reusable. Full reusability could help Starship reduce the cost of getting to space 1000-fold.
The latest prototype is called Starship serial number 10 or SN10. It’s not yet clear exactly when SpaceX plans to attempt its test flight, but Musk said on Sunday that there is a “good chance” of launch this week.
When that happens, SN10 will roar tens of thousands of feet above SpaceX’s facilities in Boca Chica, Texas. One by one, he must shut off his engines as he nears the peak of his flight, then tilt sideways and drop back to Earth in a controlled belly flop. As it approaches the ground, the rocket must fire its engines again to set itself up in time to slow its descent and gently hit the landing pad.
The last two times SpaceX performed such a flight, the prototypes slammed into their landing pads and exploded.
SPadre.com captured the second incident with a camera on top of a building about 10 km away:
Before this impending launch, SpaceX must conduct a static fire to test the rocket’s engines, but the company appears to have all the government approval it needs for the launch. That includes the approval of a take-off permit, local road closures and airspace closures.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued CT notices of airspace closure for the area on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Cameron County, Texas, also made an announcement on Thursday about the road closure of Boca Chica from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT. However, road and airspace closures can be canceled and rescheduled over and over again until SpaceX is actually ready to launch.
We will update this post once SpaceX confirms the timing of its launch attempt.
SpaceX faces regulatory hurdles to get Starship into orbit
SpaceX’s two previous test flights – those of prototypes SN8 and SN9 – were considered successes despite their explosive end. That’s because they demonstrated that Starship is capable of firing to suborbital heights and then controlling its fall.
Those flights, however, both led to FAA investigations, as the agency sought to determine the cause of the explosions. It turned out that SN8 had been a victim of low pressure in a propellant tank, causing the spaceship to fall too fast and hit its landing pad.
An additional problem with that attempt was that SpaceX had not received proper FAA approval, thus violating its launch license.
This led to its own investigation, which subsequently halted the SN9 flight. Once that prototype was flown, one of the three Raptor engines could not be re-ignited when the missile approached the ground.
All those investigations have been closed, an FAA spokesman told CNN reporter Jackie WattlesAnd the launch license updates for the SN10 flight have been approved, the Washington Post reporter said Christian Davenport
Ultimately, SpaceX will want to shoot a spaceship into orbit to test whether it can re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. That requires a different type of FAA permit, but getting this one requires removing many regulatory hurdles, including a thorough environmental assessment.
(The environmental impact statement that SpaceX previously completed for Boca Chica launches focused on the company’s smaller rockets, rather than the much larger Starship-Super Heavy system.)
The company is now waiting to begin that environmental assessment, but depending on the findings, SpaceX may need to conduct a new impact statement, which could take up to three years.
Complicating Matters is a leaked FAA draft document, obtained by Insider, which revealed that SpaceX plans to dig natural gas wells in Boca Chica to fuel spaceships and power plants. Such plans may also affect SpaceX’s environmental review process.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
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