Musk SpaceX SN15 spacecraft landing success, humans closer to Mars? After thrusting, climbing and crossing the highest point by 10 kilometers, the SN15 began its dive, landing flip, deceleration and finally landed safely.
The SN15 took off from the company’s test site in Boca Chica, Texas, at 6:24 a.m. on May 6. The entire test took about six minutes, and six minutes later the SN15 successfully landed back in its designated position on the test site. After several failures, SN15 became the first starship to achieve a 100 percent soft landing. Although a fire similar to that of SN10 occurred at the base of the rocket after landing, the remote-controlled fire suppression system was able to extinguish the fire in just a few minutes during this test, avoiding a repeat of the failure.
Shortly after the successful landing of SN15, Musk tweeted, “Starship landed with flying colors!” The success of the Starship test signifies that SpaceX has mastered the critical safe landing technology that will drive the next phase of Starship development.
At the same time, the successful test flight of SN15 may come as a timely surprise to SpaceX as the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is in the midst of a 100-day adjudication period.
“Starship pioneers and hundreds of technical improvements
“Failure is the mother of success,” and SN15’s success is based on the data recovered by the “starship martyrs.
Prior to the successful landing, SpaceX’s starship prototypes SN8, SN9, SN10, and SN11 all exploded during high-altitude test flights, and with the starships scrapped during the initial starship pressure tests, ultra-low temperature pressurization tests, and other pre-tests, a total of 10 starships had failed before SN15.
SN10 was the closest to success of the previous tests, having successfully completed its flight test and soft landing, but six minutes after landing, SN10 suddenly caught fire and exploded.
The most recent failure was the SN11 test flight at high altitude on March 30 of this year, when the live feed of the SN11, which had been going well, was aborted as it reignited its engines to perform a landing flip, followed by a loud explosion that disintegrated the SN11 into pieces in the air.
Multiple starships were blown up before SN15 was successfully tested
Despite the string of failures in front of him, Musk did not slow down the testing process, but instead accelerated the SN15 launch program. The SN15 has hundreds of design improvements, according to Musk, who has gone on record as saying that the SN11 has gone straight from SN15 to SN11.
According to SpaceX’s original plan, SN12-SN14 were already in progress when SN11 was tested, and with the amount of data recovered from previous failed tests, SN15 has more than enough reference data on the design and more improvements.
Known improvements include three new Raptor engines, optimization of the propulsion system down to relocating the methane distribution manifold from inside the liquid oxygen chamber to the bottom of the bulkhead, as well as moving the TVC speed controller and duct hoop from the head cone bulkhead to the thrust disc, and more.
All of the improvements revolve around the engine and propulsion system stability issues that were the key deficiencies of the previous ships and that led to the failure of the previous four ships.
In addition, one of the more visible differences between SN15 and its predecessors was that it had more heat shields, more than 800, compared to SN8’s initial 8 and SN11’s 384. The reason for this is that the new generation of SN15 is made of thinner stainless steel, which requires more attention to insulation issues.
Rapid iteration, testing and data recovery, this approach to research and development is clearly more efficient, from SN8 to SN15 test the probability of success from only one-third gradually increased to 60%, 90% and today SN15 success.
The SN15 also installed the Starlink, according to Musk’s vision Starlink can be in the future in aircraft, vehicles and even spacecraft to provide people with communication services anywhere, anytime. Musk has not yet revealed what its specific role is, and this question will have to be revealed in the future.
Orbital test flights may be on track
What is currently being tested is actually only the spacecraft part of Starship, not including the first stage booster rocket “Super Heavey”.
According to the original concept of the Starship project, the Starship will consist of two parts, one is an interstellar spacecraft like SN11 and SN15, and the other is a booster for boosting.
BN1 was the first “Super Heavey” to be publicly unveiled, but has now been dismantled.
On the same day as the SN11 launch, Musk tweeted, “BN1 is a manufacturing pathfinder that will be scrapped when its mission is complete. We’ve learned a lot (from experience and lessons learned), but will apply these design optimizations to BN2.”
At the time, Musk, as always, gave a very optimistic goal “BN2 and engines are expected to be on the orbital stage launcher by the end of April, and if we’re lucky, we may even have the capability to go into orbit.”
However, with the repeated delays in the SN15 launch, the BN2 test program has yet to begin. Now that SN15 has been successfully tested, Musk, who has always focused on efficiency, is bound to put a booster rocket test on the schedule as soon as possible.
Before the official orbital test flight, “Super Heavey” also needs to complete a series of ground tests (environmental pressure test, cryogenic pressurization test, thrust structure pressure test, static ignition test) beforehand. Adjustment, the problems that appear in BN2 in BN3 to improve, and continue to iterate.
In mid-March Musk had blown up the goal of using BN3 as a first-stage SN20 as a second-stage combination for an orbital launch test by July 1 at the earliest.
This plan may fail, but failure is not a bad thing, after all, failure may be a success.
A Timely Surprise
Starship as a set of reusable delivery system, not only can perform Earth orbit mission, but also be able to complete the mission of landing on the moon and Mars.
On April 16, NASA announced SpaceX as the sole contractor for the Artemis Mission manned lunar lander, and the lunar landing version of Starship as the only manned lunar lander for the 2024 lunar return program.
The program will provide SpaceX with $2.9 billion in research and development funding, which will be the largest single source of funding for the Starship program, and Musk was even excited to change his Twitter avatar to a lunar version of the Starship.
However, ten days later, SpaceX’s contract with NASA for a manned lunar lander was called off.
On April 26, Blue Origin and Dynetics filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), claiming that the selection process for NASA’s contracted manned lunar lander program was “seriously flawed. NASA subsequently called off a $2.9 billion lunar landing contract with SpaceX, including a freeze on the project’s schedule, technical consultations, and funding allocations.
The success of the SN15 test flight comes at a particularly opportune time for SpaceX, now in the midst of a 100-day GAO ruling period.
The GAO will have to make a ruling within 100 days, and there are only two outcomes: either the original NASA contract will be upheld and Blue Origin and Dynetics’ lawsuit will be dismissed, or the contract will be found to be flawed and a new ruling will be made.
But either way, the outcome will not be too bad for SpaceX, which has a technological advantage and has been successful in both test flights and landings.
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