From the Mars Colonial Transporter to Starship,
the brainchild of Elon Musk had a pretty long developmental history.
This video will address the key developments happened from 2007 to
2020 for this ambitious rocket.
So let's dive into rocket science.
Everything started in 2007 when Musk stated a personal goal of
enabling human exploration and settlement of Mars.
The launch vehicle was initially mentioned in public discussions by the SpaceX
CEO Elon Musk in 2012 known as Mars Colonial Transporter.
Also,
SpaceX began development of its Raptor rocket engine in the same year.
In February 2014, the principal payload for the Mars Colonial
transport was announced to be a large interplanetary spacecraft capable of
carrying up to 100 tons of passengers and cargo to Mars.
In his September 2016 announcement,
Musk noted that the name Mars Colonial Transporter would not continue as the
system would be able to go well beyond Mars.
And a new name Interplanetary Transport System was selected.
Later in 2017, ITS was renamed into BFR or Big Falcon Rocket
Both were a two stage rockets with many key design changes.
Standing at 122 meters,
the ITS was the tallest and most powerful rocket ever produced, while
BFR was redesigned to 106 meters,
ITS was 12 meters in diameter,
which shrinks to nine meters in BFR.
Next, let's talk about the number of engines on the vehicle.
The BFR had 31 RaptOR engines vs 42 in ITS.
The new BFR has an impressive 48 mega Newtons of thrust at lift off,
which is way down compared to ITS which claimed 128 mega Newtons
of thrust.
Lastly,
payload capacity to low earth orbit,
The BFR can put 150 tonnes into orbit.
Compared the ITS,
which could do 300 tons.
In engineering, changes
bring better technologies.
On November 2018 1 year after the announcement of BFR,
on 2017 SpaceX  came up with a new redesigned concept for the
BFR by naming Starship for its upper stage and Super Heavy for its
booster stage.
Musk pointed out that the booster stage was needed to escape Earth's deep gravity well
but not needed for other planets or moons.
The key design features of this design includes increasing the total height from previous
106 meters to 120 meters,
using 31Raptor engines for super heavy and six Raptor engines
with three optimized for sea level and three optimized for vacuum for Starship.
Sub cooled methane and oxygen became the fuel
and the oxidizer powering the mission.
Methane,
which can be easily manufactured on Mars by using carbon dioxide from Martian
atmosphere,
became the right choice for fuel.
In January 2019 Musk announced that the starship would no
longer be constructed out of carbon fiber.
Instead,
SpaceX will use stainless steel to build the starship.
Musk cited several reasons,
including cost,
strength and ease of production
to justify making the switch. Space X immediately started the
construction of prototypes.
By late May 2019 the first prototype Star Hopper
 
was preparing for untethered flight tests in Boca Chica, South Texas.
 
While two orbital prototypes were also under construction.
The two ships were constructed by competing teams that were required to share
progress,
insights and build techniques with the other team,
but neither team is required to use the other teams techniques.
In July 2019 the Star Hopper made its initial flight test,
the hop of around 20 meters altitude and a second and final hop in
August,
reaching an altitude of around 150 meters.
The successful test of Star Hopper accelerated the production of Starship Orbital
prototypes.
SpaceX completed the external structure of the  Starship MK1 in time
for Musk's public update on September 2019.
But on 20th November 2019 the MK1 test article came
apart in a tank pressure test in Texas.
The same day,
Space X stated that they would stop developing MK1 and MK2 and move
on to work on the MK3 and MK4 articles.
A few weeks later,
the work on the vehicles in Florida paused and Starship development work started
focusing on the Texas site.
In December 2019, Musk announced that the      Starship MK3 versions would be
redesignated into Starship SN1,
and there would be minor design improvements from Starship Starship SN1 to SN20.
SpaceX began construction of the internal components for the vehicle in December
2019 and started stacking Starship SN1 at Boca Chica two months
later.
SN1 failed to cryogenic pressurization test on 28
February 2020 due to a design failure in the lower tank thrust
structure.
After the incident,
SpaceX announced that they were focusing their efforts on the next test article
Starship SN2 and conducted a successful test of
SN2 tanks.
structure on 8th March 2020.
Later Starship SN3 was planned to be used for static fire
tests and short hops while SN4 for longer flights.
Starships SN3 was destroyed during testing on 3rd April
2020.
The cause of the failure was a testing configuration error.
A valve was inadvertently commanded to open,
resulting in pressure loss and structural failure of the lower portion of the prototype
and it crumbled under the weight of the heavy methane tanks.
The next prototype SN4 past cryogenic pressure testing on
26th April 2020.
But it was destroyed on 29 May 2020,  after a successful static
fire test of its single rapture engine, due to a failure with the ground support
equipments.
Currently,
SN5 and SN6 are undergoing construction.
The future of Starship tests include a 20 kilometers test flight of Starship
SN5 and the first orbital test flight before the end of
2020.
Musk declared in June 2020 that the starship is the top SpaceX priority.
So let's wait and see what SpaceX and Elon Musk can do in future to
make human a multi planetary species.
I have deliberately skipped the technical details of Starship in this video
because it requires making an entire dedicated video on that topic.
So don't forget to subscribe the channel to
learn the engineering aspects of Starship from our future videos
And as always
thanks for watching.
