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SpaceX has applied its latest engines Starship The third prototype was on Thursday evening (November 12), but the experiment was a hit.
The Starship SN8 vehicle carried out its third brief “static fire” – engines ignited during a test, as a rocket crashed – near the village of Boca Chika on Thursday at the Space Tex facility in southern Texas.
Shortly after testing on the webcast by several outside organizations, the material deviates from the SN8 base. It sounded strange, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk It was soon confirmed that something nominal had happened.
Related: Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX’s Mars colonizing vehicles in pictures
“We have lost the vehicle’s pneumatics because the cause is now unknown. The pressure of the liquid oxygen tank is increasing. Hopefully, the rupture disc will activate to reduce the pressure, otherwise it will open the cap, “Musk said. Said via Twitter Thursday night. (Like valves, rupture discs are disposable devices that close off various sections or systems of the vehicle. As Musk points out, they release pressure when opened.)
The cause of the problem is now unknown, Musk said Another tweet from Thursday: “An engine pre-burner or hot gas manifold can melt. This could cause the pneumatic components to leak. We need to design this problem.”
This is bad news. The good news is that Burst Disc has done its job and the SN8 is still whole.
“The popped disc worked, so the vehicle looks fine. We need to replace at least one of the engines, “Musk said. Another tweet.
The vehicle looks fine because the blown disc worked. We need to replace at least one of the engines.November 13, 2020
The SN8 (“Serial No. 8”) has three raptors, SpaceX’s most powerful next-generation engine running on liquid methane and liquid oxygen. The previous StarShip prototype had no more than one adapter.
Static fires of SN8 – first two 20 October November 10 – Intended to pave the way for a 9 mile (15 km) test flight in the near future. He is much taller than all of his predecessors. The Stubhopper and the SN5 and SN6 prototypes reached a maximum altitude of 500 feet (150m) during their flights, which took place in the summer of 2019 and in late August and September. (SN8 includes a nose corner and fixed fins.
The setback on Thursday night will delay SN8’s big jump, but how long will it take to wait.
The 165ft (50m) vehicle is equipped with a large rocket known as the Starship, a super rocket, both of which can be completely and quickly reused. The final StarShip aircraft will have six beams and the Super Heavy approximately 30 engines.
SpaceX Starship sees the colonization of Mars – Musk’s long-term ambition – as an important transportation system. If all goes according to plan, Starship will handle all of SpaceX’s other space flight needs, from launching satellites to clearing space junk and boarding passengers on super-fast point-to-point missions around the world.
Mike Wall “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; Illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about finding aliens. Follow him on Twitter ക്കൽ MichaelDwall.
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