STARSHIP - The revolution has begun... (Part 1)

Starship Mk1

It looked for all the world like something that might have graced the cover of a 1950s comic book. On September 28th, Elon Musk unveiled his company’s newest addition, Starship Mk1. It stands 50 metres tall and is made from shiny plates of stainless steel. Despite its name, it is not in fact an interstellar spacecraft, but a prototype of an interplanetary one. Musk hopes, one day, to use its successors to ferry passengers to the Moon or to Mars and beyond.

In the 17 years since its founding, SpaceX’s cheap, reusable machines have revolutionised the rocket business. Its ultra-low prices have seen it grab a dominant share of the commercial satellite-launching market. Along with Boeing, and now Virgin Galactic, SpaceX is responsible for ferrying supplies to the International Space Station. It may soon fly astronauts there as well. But all of this commercial success is merely a necessary first step in Mr Musk’s bigger plan, which is to make humanity into a “multiplanetary species” by establishing colonies elsewhere in the solar system.

The Starship design concept for the 9-meter rocket was unveiled in September 2017 but work by SpaceX on the engine had begun much earlier and previous larger concepts had been discussed since 2013. SpaceX's Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket (collectively referred to as Starship) represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. Starship will be the world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry in excess of 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit. Drawing on an extensive history of launch vehicle and engine development programs, SpaceX has been rapidly iterating on the design of Starship with orbital-flight targeted for 2020. One can consider the starship as a missing link that has just been found like it was the missing piece of the puzzle and now that we are ready with a prototype, we can finally change the dream into reality. An important thing to remember is that Starship's prototype was given the name of Starhopper wich was just recently retired after its latest 150m suborbital hop test.

STARSHIP

Starship is the fully reusable second stage and has an integrated payload section. Starship serves as a large, long-duration spacecraft capable of carrying passengers or cargo to Earth orbit, planetary destinations, and between destinations on Earth.

• DIAMETER

  9 m/30 ft

• HEIGHT

  50 m/160 ft

• PROPELLANT CAPACITY

  1200 t/2.4 Mlb

• PAYLOAD CAPACITY

  100+ t/220+ klb
• 
  

The starship separating from super heavy rocket

SUPER HEAVY

The first stage, or booster, of our next-generation launch vehicle has a gross liftoff mass of over 3 million kg and uses sub-cooled liquid methane and liquid oxygen (CH4/LOX) propellants. The booster will return to land at the launch site on its 6 legs.

• DIAMETER

  9 m/30 ft

• HEIGHT

  68 m/223 ft

• PROPELLANT CAPACITY

  3300 t/6.6 Mlb

• THRUST

  72 MN/16 Mlbf

Proposed uses of Starship :

• The Starship payload fairing is 9 m in diameter and ~19 m high, resulting in the largest usable payload volume of any current or in development launcher. This payload volume can be configured for both crew and cargo.
• SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy rocket are designed to deliver satellites to Earth orbit and beyond, at a lower marginal cost per launch than our current Falcon vehicles. With a 9m diameter forward payload compartment, larger than any other current or planned fairing, Starship creates possibilities for new missions, including space telescopes even larger than the James Webb.
• Starship can deliver both cargo and people to and from the International Space Station. Starship’s forward payload volume is about 1,100 m3, providing significant capacity for in-space activities. The aft cargo containers can also host a variety of payloads.
• Returning to the Moon and developing bases to support future space exploration requires the transport of large amounts of cargo to the Moon for research and human spaceflight development. The fully reusable Starship system is capable of supporting this effort by carrying the building blocks needed to enable a Moon base and by informing the development of propulsive landing systems to help realize this future.
• Building Moon bases and Mars cities will require affordable delivery of significant quantities of cargo and people. The fully reusable Starship system uses in-space propellant transfer to enable the delivery of over 100t of useful mass to the surface of the Moon or Mars. This system is designed to ultimately carry as many as 100 people on long-duration, interplanetary flights.

Now let's talk about what it packs underneath

RAPTOR ENGINE

Raptor is a full-flow, staged combustion rocket engine powered by cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen (LOX), rather than the RP-1 kerosene and LOX used in SpaceX’s prior Merlin engine family. The Super Heavy booster is powered by 37 Raptors, while Starship is powered by 6.

• DIAMETER

  1.3 m/4 ft

• HEIGHT

  3.1 m/10.2 ft

• THRUST

  2 MN/440 klbf

That was just one Raptor engine fired at 30% propellant efficiency. The starship is fitted with 6 of these while the super heavy has 37 of these Raptor engines for thrust, sounds CRAZY, right?! As i previously said that Starhopper was the working prototype for the Starship, here are the tests conducted with the Starhopper covering various aspects of flight

Date	Orbital/suborbital (altitude)	Duration	Remarks
03-Apr-19	Raptor/Starhopper integration hot fire test.	a few seconds	First static fire of Starhopper, single Raptor engine. Also was first hot fire test of Raptor in a vertical orientation.
05-Apr-19	Suborbital ("hit tether limits", about 1 m or 3 ft)	a few seconds	Second tethered hop which hit tethered limits. With a single Raptor engine, S/N 2.
16-Jul-19	Pad test static fire	full duration static fire	Single-Raptor static fire occurred, using S/N 6 production-level Raptor. The test was followed several minutes later by the water fire suppression system on the pad coming on and the ignition of a discharge of methane around the Starhopper vehicle.
25-Jul-19	Suborbital (20 m) (66 ft)	about 22 seconds	First free flight test. Single Raptor engine, S/N 6. Was previously scheduled for the day before but was aborted. A test flight attempt on 24 July was scrubbed.
27-Aug-19	Suborbital (150 m)   (490 ft)	About 57 seconds	Single Raptor engine, S/N 6. They called this the "150 meter Starhopper Test" on their livestream. Starhopper Was retired after this launch, with some parts being reused for other tests.

It was out of the scope of just one article to be able to explain all the nitty-gritties of this extraordinary modern marvel. So do lookout for the second part of this article which dives a little more deeper into the Starship project, but until then

Ciao!

Note - All the photos are original property of SpaceX