Elon Musk wants to save tens of billions of taxpayer dollars by launching cheaper rockets.
In recent years, he’s been working on the problem. First, he was playing with a “Grasshopper” rocket to see if it would be possible to launch and then safely release part of a rocket. SpaceX then scaled the Grasshopper for the reusable Falcon 9 rockets that became the mainstay of the space launch, landing some on dry ground and others at sea. Then came the invention of recoverable and reusable space capsules and, finally, boats equipped with giant nets to capture the rockets’ fairings before they hit the sea.
Step by step, Musk learned to recover most of the value of each rocket launched, saving money by not having to rebuild more and more parts and instead use them continuously.
But it is not over yet. Now he’s building a rocket that’s 100% reusable. And it’s almost ready for prime time.
Image source: Elon Musk.
The first and last flight of the SN9 starship
On Tuesday, February 2, SpaceX conducted its second high-altitude flight test for a new 100% reusable rocket – the Starship. Over the course of 6 exciting minutes and 26 seconds, the starship’s “SN9” model flew 10 kilometers in the air, turned sideways, fell 10 kilometers back, spun again to attempt a vertical landing – and failed to maintain the landing.
Descending very fast and playing more diagonally than vertically, SN9 exploded into a fireball on impact. In doing so, he doubled the fate of his predecessor prototype, the SN8, which actually came closer to successfully landing on his test flight on December 9.
Because the SN9 failed? How it really seemed to work worst than the SN8? See for yourself:
Live feed of the Starship SN9 flight test → https://t.co/Hs5C53qBxb https://t.co/ioM0D5J91I
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 2, 2021
On the one hand, the SN9 engines waited three more seconds to rekindle for the landing burn last week than the SN8 did two months ago. To make matters worse, says SpaceX, “a Raptor engine did not reignite, causing the SN9 to land at high speed” (and unbalanced).
If in the first (and second) you don’t succeed, do you give up?
In short, SpaceX adjusted its landing process for the SN9, but a mechanical difficulty prevented this new approach from working – it is Time. The good news is that SpaceX already has “a clear solution” to the problem (burning three engines on landing instead of two).
That said, burning the ship’s landing has a clear solution. My biggest concern is to get a good payload to orbit with a capacity for rapid and total reuse, without which we will be forever confined to Earth.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2021
It was foolish not to start 3 engines and immediately turn off 1, as 2 are needed to land
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2021
A few hours after the SN9 explosion, SpaceX has figured out how to do better next time. And there will definitely be a next time – maybe sooner than you think.
Consider: the SN8 made its test flight on December 9, 2020. Less than two months later, SpaceX was ready to try again with the SN9. And in the photo above, you may have noticed that SpaceX already has a third spacecraft rocket lined up for it is turn to try – the SN10. (And an SN11 is under construction right now.)
What happens next?
In total, SpaceX expects to go through up to twenty SN prototypes in quick succession before finally equipping one with a total complement of six Raptor engines (these test versions use only three) and send it into orbit. So even with the SN9 in pieces, it means that the company is almost halfway through the tests.
With the pace of test launches accelerating, it seems likely that before the end of this year, we could see a starship in orbit.
What happens next?
At that point, SpaceX will be the only company on Earth to have a fully recoverable and fully reusable space rocket – and not only that, but the largest space rocket on the planet, capable of lifting more than 100 tons of cargo into orbit.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that, once that happens, the world will change.
Suddenly, SpaceX will have a rocket that, once built, needs little more than refueling before it can be reused continuously, reducing the cost of space launch to the cost of filling up the tank. Almost everyone trying to compete with SpaceX, though – and I’m thinking particularly about Boeing and Lockheed Martin and its United Launch Alliance joint venture here – will still use more expensive disposable rockets. That or they will race to catch up with SpaceX, as Arianespace in Europe, Linkspace in China and Roscosmos in Russia are doing.
And even these rockets will be a generation behind SpaceX, only partially reusable (similar to Falcon 9).
While its competitors are catching up with the latest generation of reusable rockets, however, SpaceX can begin to eliminate its own Falcon 9s and Falcon Heavies – and landing barges, fairing pickups and all the other infrastructures needed to recapture parts of the rocket little by little. . Your indirect costs will fall, your cost of doing business will decrease, and SpaceX will be able to reduce the price of each company it competes with, dominating the space industry for years to come.
Game, set and matching: SpaceX.