SpaceX SECRET WEAPON is This NEW Launch Tower!
SpaceX SECRET WEAPON is This NEW Launch Tower!
One day in the not-too-distant future, Elon Musk envisions blasting off from Earth and sending his next-generation Starship on its way to the moon, Mars, or just the other side of the world. Several minutes later, the first-stage booster used for liftoff makes its way back to the launch tower, where it is "caught" by a specially designed arm and readied for another launch in as soon as an hour.
In this video, we will be filling you in with exactly how Musk plans to execute his mission with the help of SpaceX's incredible Starship and Super Heavy launch system. But before we dive further into this, make sure to press the subscribe button and do not forget to hit the bell icon to never miss out on any of our latest space niche videos.
NASA recently selected Starship as the crewed lander for its Artemis program, which plans to put humans on the moon later in the 2020s, and SpaceX is all geared up for its new mission as it rolled out its next version of Starship to the launch pad on Thursday, Aug 5th, as the company shoots for an ambitious orbital test.
The Starship prototype, known as SN20, left its production facility near the South Texas village of Boca Chica to arrive at the launch pad — joining the Super Heavy first-stage booster that arrived there two days before. And after a slight delay, CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX is now on track to stack a complete Starship prototype on top of a Super Heavy booster for the first time ever.
Musk revealed that SpaceX had fitted the Starship with a full six Raptors – a first for any Starship prototype, though Super Heavy Booster 4 technically beat it to the punch with the installation of a staggering 29 Raptor engines hours prior.
Together, Ship 20 and Booster 4 represent both stages of the integrated vehicle that will support Starship's first orbital test flight – a mission that's expected to occur before the end of the year. In the interim, a great deal of work remains, but SpaceX is far closer than it's ever been with both an orbital-class Starship and Super Heavy nearly complete.
Of course, both those rocket stages have plenty of crucial steps to check off before SpaceX can truly consider them ready for flight. Like all Starship prototypes, Ship 20 will need to complete proof testing after assembly is complete. Notably, Ship 20 is the first Starship prototype with mounting points for a full six Raptors, meaning that it will almost certainly be put through an even more rigorous proof test in which hydraulic rams will simulate the thrust of those engines.
The same might be true for Super Heavy Booster 4, which had 29 Raptor engines installed in 14 hours in a spectacular and unprecedented feat of rocket assembly. At least five of its engines appear to have never been static fired, implying that those engines – at a minimum – will likely be removed and sent back to SpaceX's McGregor development facilities for individual qualification testing before being declared ready for flight.
The rocket's conical nose section joined it in the high bay later the evening of 3rd August and SpaceX wasted no time stacking and welding the two Starship halves together early on August 4th, effectively completing the basic structure of SN 20. After a day of final integration work, Starship SN 20 left the high bay around dawn on August 5th and took to the highway for a brief trip from SpaceX's Boca Chica factory to launch and testing facilities just a mile and a half to the east.
On August 3rd, Super Heavy Booster 4 made the same trip from the build site to the launch pad, where it sat on the transporter overnight. On August 4th, SpaceX installed the immense 69-meter-tall rocket booster on an orbital launch mount that itself had only been installed less than a week prior.
Sitting on top of the fairly tall orbital launch mount, Starship S20 and Super Heavy Booster 4 will stand about as tall as that 145m launch tower, though the booster and ship itself are expected to be just shy of 120m from tip to Raptor tail. Once stacked, the vehicle will be the tallest rocket assembled in the history of spaceflight.
On top of the tower, a 10 feet lightning rod will ensure that the vehicles on the ground are protected from any lightning strikes. This will ensure that vehicles on the launch pad remain safe in case of lightning strikes, as in May last year, with the Starship SN4 prototype sitting right beside the location a bolt hit the ground.
In December 2020 Musk tweeted saying, "We're going to try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load… Saves mass & cost of legs & enables immediate repositioning of booster on to launch mount—ready to refly in under an hour."
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