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SpaceX
How SpaceX's rocket return to base could make space flights cheaper
The most recent flight of Starship, the most powerful spacecraft in the world, may have been a step towards reducing the interval between space flights and thus making them cheaper. In an unprecedented feat, SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, managed to bring the first stage of the ship, the Super Heavy rocket — the most powerful in history — back to the launch pad.
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Measuring 70 meters high and 9 meters in diameter, he was captured while still in the air, using the mechanical arms of the structure known as Mechazilla.
Musk hopes that, in the future, the ship itself can also be fully recovered (it separates from the rocket after a few minutes and continues its course alone into space, until it returns to the Earth's atmosphere). On Sunday, the capsule (without a crew) landed in the Gulf of Mexico, but exploded shortly after.
The ultimate goal is that this set (rocket and ship) can be put back into flight almost immediately after completing a trip. “This is the fork in the road of destiny that will allow humanity to become a multi-planetary civilization,” Musk said.
“Total and immediate reuse with low-cost propellant [fuel] will mean a marginal cost per ton approximately 100 times better than that of the Falcon [another smaller rocket from SpaceX], which is already 10 times better than that of the Shuttle [the space shuttles, from NASA]”, he stated.
Cost reduction mainly involves the factors below.
– Less costly manufacturing: achieved by simplifying rocket components;
– Savings on transportation: when the rocket lands directly at the launch base, the company reduces costs and time to bring the vehicle back compared to landing at sea, for example. “There is a cost to going there to get it. If the rocket returns alone, it is much cheaper”, explains Annibal Hetem, professor of space propulsion on the aerospace engineering course at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC);
In the mission on the 13th, the Super Heavy undocked from Starship minutes after takeoff, after reaching an altitude of around 70 km. The capsule continued flying through space until it landed in the Indian Ocean, about an hour after launch.
After separating from the spacecraft, the rocket began the movement that would take it back to the ground. As the launch is shaped like an arc, the Super Heavy rose another 26 km, practically horizontally, until it began its descent, where it reached almost 4,400 km/h.
When approaching Mechazilla (the system that will grab it at the launch base), with a speed of around 200 km/h, the rocket turned on its main and side engines, to have more control of the descent.
The landing ended 7 minutes after launch, with the platform's mechanical arms “embracing” the vehicle. “There is no reverse gear on a rocket, what SpaceX did was balance the weight. What makes it descend is the weight, the gravity, in a controlled way”, says Hetem.
“The main difficulty with this type of thing is knowing the dynamics of the vehicle in advance. What was done was simulated thousands of times, everything is pre-calculated”, adds Dourado.