Elon Musk’s huge challenge to send humans to Mars in 6 years

Astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft. [스페이스X]

Conceptual map of a Mars city envisioned by SpaceX. [스페이스X]

The Rocket Starship developed by SpaceX exploded in the air four minutes after taking off due to an engine failure on April 20 (local time). [스페이스X]

Raptor engine mounted on Starship. [스페이스X]

In 2029, SpaceX’s ‘Starship’, the flagship spaceship for humanity’s advance to Mars, went on its first earth orbit test flight in Texas, USA on April 20 (local time), but exploded in 4 minutes after taking off. SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, announced that the Flight Termination System (FTS), a mechanism that explodes on its own to prevent danger to people or structures on the ground if the rocket departs from the planned trajectory, seems to have been activated.

Fail fast, improve fast

Starship consists of a super heavy booster, a large fuel tank containing propellant, and a hull that transports people or cargo. After take-off, some of the 33 engines in the lower super heavy booster failed, and it seems that the separation of the rocket system did not proceed properly. Because of this, it passed the ‘maximum Q’, the flight point that receives the maximum mechanical stress, but ended the flight with a fireball at an altitude of 39 km.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on Twitter, saying, “All great achievements throughout history have required some calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward.” . Starship is scheduled to travel to the moon with 11 passengers on a private space trip scheduled for this year. NASA is also supporting SpaceX’s Starship development. As part of the Artemis program, it signed a $2.9 billion contract with SpaceX to land astronauts on the moon as early as 2025. Some features of the Starship have been tested in the meantime, but the April launch was the first integrated test flight to proceed with the Starship’s full separation. The explosion showed just how far into the future Musk’s greatest ambition, ‘shipping people into space’, is realistic. However, in an e-mail sent to his staff after the explosion of the Starship, Musk said, “I think we will be able to launch the Starship into orbit within this year. If you can’t do it this year, you can definitely do it next year. Mars, here we go!”

Of course, commercial rockets rarely make a successful first launch. SpaceX’s first rocket, the Falcon 1, also finally reached orbit on its fourth attempt after three failed attempts. Above all, SpaceX’s philosophy on testing is rather unconventional. If there is a problem, it prefers to fail quickly, find the cause, and fix it in the next rocket. It’s a very different approach than traditional organizations like NASA spend a lot of time carefully identifying possible problems before attempting a launch.

Transporting humans to Mars by Starship

Since its foundation in 2002, SpaceX has been changing the space industry despite its short history of 20 years. Musk has developed the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy rocket, Crew Dragon spacecraft, and Starship with the goal of advancing to Mars and realizing cheaper space travel. The Falcon rocket became the first rocket to launch a cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) by a private company. The Falcon 9 is also sending satellites, cargo and people into space with remarkable progress. The Crew Dragon spacecraft is also the first private spacecraft designed as a manned spacecraft, and is tasked with transporting astronauts to the ISS.

Starship is a rocket that carries people or cargo to the moon and Mars, and is expected to serve as the main spacecraft needed to advance to Mars. The reason Musk pursues Mars colonization is to preserve humanity in case the Earth is destroyed by nuclear war or asteroid impact. In 2005, Musk announced plans to build a giant rocket code-named ‘BFR’ (Big Fucking Rocket), and then promoted Starship development. The reason why large-scale rocket development is most important in the plan to advance to Mars is that it can move as many people as possible on long-distance space travel from Earth to Mars. When properly operated, the Starship will be the most powerful rocket ever developed. It is about 120 m high, weighs 4.9 million kg, and has a payload of up to 150 tons. It is a payload that can transport dozens of people. In addition, the Starship has a diameter of 9 m, which is large enough to carry even a very large telescope larger than the James Webb Space Telescope, which has a diameter of 6.5 m.

The Starship Booster consists of 33 individual raptor engines. SpaceX has been working hard on research to improve engine performance for Falcon rockets. The Raptor engine generates more than three times the thrust (the force that pushes the projectile up) compared to conventional Falcon rockets. As a result, the Starship produces about 7,700 tons of thrust, more than twice that of the Saturn V rocket that sent astronauts to the moon 50 years ago. Compared to the new large rocket SLS recently developed by NASA as part of the Artemis program, which has a thrust of 4000 tons, and another rocket Falcon Heavy of SpaceX, which has a thrust of about 2230 tons, it is superior in performance.

Refueling Challenge

SpaceX introduced the concept of ‘reuse’ to rocket development. Whereas Falcon 9 rockets only partially return to Earth after launch, Starships are designed to be fully reusable. After launch, the super heavy is separated from the hull and safely lands on the ground so that it can be used again. In the meantime, Starships have ignited their own engines and carried people, satellites, or cargo into orbit. SpaceX is also helping to make traveling to space even more affordable. Private commercial companies are leading the existing space travel, which was conducted at the national level, contributing to pursuing diversity and lowering costs. For example, NASA’s SLS is analyzed to cost about 4.1 billion dollars (about 5.45 trillion won) to launch once. On the other hand, according to SpaceX, Starship is expected to reduce costs by at least 1 million dollars (about 1.33 billion won) per launch.

SpaceX’s goal is to expand humanity into multiplanetary species. Musk has embodied the sci-fi imagination that humanity can survive off Earth if it can establish a base on a new planet like Mars. After advancing to the moon with its own space technology, it aims to take its first steps on Mars in 2029 at the earliest. And, by 2050 at the earliest, they are pursuing a plan to build a self-sufficient city with a population of 1 million on Mars.

Starship, a super-powerful rocket to realize this, opens access to distant space with a generous loading scale above all. If it is possible to transport more than 100 people into space at once and send 1 million tons of cargo needed to build a city there in a short period of time, it may be possible to move the residence to Mars, which was only imagined in science fiction movies.

Finding a way to refuel a spacecraft in deep space is a very important problem. Refueling a rocket in a microgravity environment has never been done before, and the cryogenic propellants used could present some major problems. In that respect, it is a tricky technology that SpaceX has implemented for space advancement to use liquid hydrogen and methane as fuel for rocket propulsion and design it to be relaunched. If that happens, we can set up refueling depots around the solar system and support movement from planet to planet. Gwynne Shotwell, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of SpaceX, attended an industry conference held in Washington, DC, USA in February and said, “Refueling in space is definitely a difficult task. that,” he explained. ?

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Lee Jong-rim, science reporter

Source: Donga

Mark

Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.