Hello Friends, Welcome to the new episode
of Engineering Today and we will be mainly
sharing two updates with you today, first
we will discuss about some updates regarding
SpaceX next generation Starships and then
latest launch of SpaceX Starlink Satellites.
The genius entrepreneur and founder of SpaceX,
Elon Musk has recently shared some detail
information about their next-generation SpaceX
starships.
On Monday, 31st August, Musk said that, he
is looking forward to the day when company’s
massive starships will be used for space travel
adding that, a huge rocket could “probably”
fly next year into Earth’s Orbit.
SpaceX is currently working on starships in
South Texas production complex.
SpaceX is planning to fly hundreds of test
missions before starship could actually transport
people in space.
Multiple numbers of SpaceX starship prototypes
are made per month due to the rapid pace of
production.
Some prototypes are for ground testing only
as SpaceX will do both low altitude and high
altitude test for starships.
Previously on August 4, SpaceX SN5, a full-scale
starship prototype showed success in 150-meter
hop test.
Company’s next starship prototype, SN6 is
also set for the same hop test.
The second hop test was originally scheduled
to Sunday, August 30, later delayed for end
of this week.
SpaceX most recent starship model SN5, powered
by a single methane fueled raptor engine,
was the first SpaceX starship prototype to
complete a hop test.
On August 4, SN5’s first attempt was aborted
due to some issues found during the launch,
later on that day it completed 150-meter test,
landing at an adjacent site.
On Monday, August 31, an online event for
Human to Mars Summit (H2M) was held which
personifies the core mission of exploring
Mars and civilization on Martian surface by
the 2030’s.
During that event, CEO of SpaceX said that,
the company is “making good progress”
on its starship and increased the production
of starship vehicle as per that requirement.
Big assembly buildings, concrete structures,
elements for launch infrastructure has developed
at Boca Chica from last year.
SpaceX was collecting instruments based on
its starships.
At first, SpaceX was assembling its starship
prototype in outdoors, using open-air welding,
now its moved on to their climate controlled
facilities.
“Building the production system so that
we can build ultimately hundreds or thousands
of starships, that’s the hard part,” Musk
said on Monday, “But we have been making
good progress on the production system as
people can see from the aerial photos of Boca
Chica.
A year ago, there was almost nothing there,
and now we have got a quite a lot of production
capability,” later added.
“We are rapidly making more and more ships,
and we will be starting production of the
booster soon.”
“The main thing that we needed to make progress
on with Starship is the production system,
as making a prototype is relatively easy.”
Musk said in that event.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk first introduced the
concept of starship in 2012, since then it
was under development.
SpaceX first starship prototype, named Starhopper
completed in last year.
Many SpaceX starship prototypes have destroyed
during tests, first four SN starship prototypes
failed during hop test.
However, SpaceX engineers gathered critical
data from those failed test and use them to
improve starship design better than ever.
Musk gave a hint about the production of SpaceX
first stage super heavy booster on this Monday.
The company is planning to build a massive
“super heavy booster” for SpaceX starship,
which will lift it up into Earth’s Orbit.
Production of super heavy booster will eventually
begin from later this week, according to SpaceX
CEO.
SpaceX is planning to take higher and lower
altitude test flights for its Starship and
super heavy booster prototypes before it could
go into the Orbit.
Those tests are to ensure that the systems
of the prototypes are working fine and ready
for its orbital launch.
According to SpaceX CEO, first super heavy
booster will fly to lower altitudes with a
minimum number of raptor engines.
To be able to fly future SpaceX starships
on higher altitudes require an aerodynamic
nose cone along with some aero surfaces and
fins, which are intended to stabilize vehicle
during lift off and landing.
According SpaceX engineers, higher altitude
starships also need three methane fueled raptor
engines and six or orbital missions.
To re-enter into Earth’s Orbit, which require
a heat shield, will be installed in future
SpaceX starships.
SpaceX future starships could carry up to
100 passengers to Mars at a time.
For orbital mission, SpaceX super heavy booster
attached to the starship will provide massive
amount of thrust during lift off.
Starship, combined with first stage super
heavy booster will stand around 120 meters
(394 feet).
According to information, a fully functional
SpaceX starship could carry 100 metric tons
(220,000 pounds) of cargo to low earth orbit,
which is similar compared to NASA’s Apollo-era
Saturn 5 launcher.
SpaceX future starships are nearly as same
size as NASA’s Saturn 5 but has a superior
engine power.
Monday, Musk gave update about the design
of SpaceX super heavy booster.
Engineers have made some modifications by
removing some Raptor engines from the design,
which eventually increase the power of thrust.
Previously, SpaceX super heavy booster was
supposed to have 31 methane fueled Raptor
engines but now the company is trying to reduce
the numbers as Musk said on Monday “SpaceX
is trying to simply the configuration, so
it might be 28.
That is still a lot of engines.
We will also end up cracking up the thrust
on the engines.”
The engines at the outer row could generate
300 tons (600,000 pounds) of thrust where
as the engines at the inner row, powered by
eight methane fueled could generate about
210 tons (420,000 pounds) of thrust.
Adding all, the super heavy booster could
give more than 15 million pounds of thrust
during lift off.
SpaceX is planning to launch its future starships
along with super heavy booster from Ocean
based platforms as previously Musk talked
about his plan based on Seaport.
If all goes according to the plan, probably
next year SpaceX will launch its first orbital
starship launch.
“I hope we do a lot of flights,” Musk
continued.
“The first ones might not work.
This is uncharted territory.
Nobody has ever made a fully reusable orbital
rocket.
So just having that at all is pretty significant.”
On Monday, Musk also said about the life support
system of starships, as SpaceX future vehicle
will need to accommodate people.
“We’ve got to make the thing work automatically,
delivering satellites, doing hundreds of mission
delivering satellites before we put people
on-board,” Musk said.
“We know how to make a complex life support
system that can deal with wide range environments,
changing atmospheric pressure, changing the
oxygen and nitrogen percentage in the air.”
That's all regarding SpaceX starships today,
let’s get into some details regarding Thursday's
launch of Starlink Satellites.
On September 3rd, SpaceX has launched a new
batch of Starlink Satellites into the orbit.
At 8.46 a.m EDT on Thursday, 60 Starlink satellites
were carried by a two staged Falcon 9 rocket.
The launch took place at Pad 39A at NASA’s
Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
SpaceX has nailed the landing as the first
stage returned to Earth about 9 minutes after
launch and landed on SpaceX droneship called
"Of Course I Still Love You." in Atlantic
Ocean.
Beginning this year, SpaceX upgraded its second
drone ship and started using it to help catch
boosters out in the Atlantic Ocean.
The landing on Thursday was the 60th recovery
of a Falcon first stage.
Having set up on the West Coast has enabled
SpaceX to increase its launch cadence and
recover more rockets.
It was SpaceX 16th mission so far in 2020
and first Starlink mission this month, also
the third attempt to make it successful after
weather issues and data review delays few
days back.
We heard SpaceX engineer and launch commentator
saying “What a beautiful sight," as the
weather was sunny and clear after a stormy
weekend.
This time SpaceX has shared some key details
regarding the planned constellation’s abilities.
As per SpaceX the it has displayed "super
low latency and download speeds greater than
100 mbps.”
Though it’s not as good as what was promised
by SpaceX CEO but still better than the previous
result.
SpaceX has placed over 700 satellites in orbit,
as per Musk more than the 400 needed to provide
“initial operational capability,” and
to provide “significant operational capabilities”
800 will be sufficient.
SpaceX has initiated their beta testing of
constellation this summer.
Kate Tice, senior program reliability engineer
at SpaceX, said during this launch broadcast.
“The SpaceX Starlink team has been collecting
latency statistics and performing standard
speed tests of the system.
This means that we’re checking how fast
data travels from the satellites to our customers,
and then back to the rest of the internet.
Initial results have been good.”
Though Tice stated the download speeds were
greater than 100 megabytes per seconds and
same was published on SpaceX Twitter account,
but it seemed to be a mistake as SpaceX deleted
the tweet and clarified that the download
speeds were exactly 100 megabits per second.
Kate Tice also mentioned that the latency
speeds was “low enough to play the fastest
online video games, and our download speed
is fast enough to stream multiple HD movies
at once and still have bandwidth to spare.”
It will be important for SpaceX for achieve
faster speed as they are in contention for
fund from FCC auction to be held next month.
$16 billion will be offered to companies that
can help bring broadband services to “over
six million homes and businesses in census
blocks that are entirely un-served by voice
and broadband.”
FCC has set a target downloads speed of at
least 25 Mbps and upload speeds of at least
3 Mbps.
As per SpaceX they have made remarkable progress
and very much in the race to grab the FCC
fund.
They said that all of its satellites would
have inter-satellite links like the one demonstrated
recently.
As per Kate Tice “Once the space lasers
are fully deployed, SpaceX Starlink will be
one of the fastest options available to transfer
data around the world,”.
That's all for today my friends.
We will soon come back with more updates.
Till then good by and take care.
