{"id":13937,"date":"2018-03-13T18:23:50","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T10:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/musk-atmospheric-tests-of-interplanetary-spaceship-could-happen-next-year\/"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:23:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T10:23:50","slug":"musk-atmospheric-tests-of-interplanetary-spaceship-could-happen-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/musk-atmospheric-tests-of-interplanetary-spaceship-could-happen-next-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk: Atmospheric tests of interplanetary spaceship could happen next year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Artist\u2019s concept of the BFR spaceship deploying a satellite in orbit. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A team of SpaceX engineers is building a prototype of the spaceship Elon Musk hopes will one day carry people and cargo deep into the solar system, and it could begin low-altitude testing next year, kicking off a multi-step test campaign before eventually going into space, then perhaps the moon or Mars.<\/p>\n

Musk said Sunday that the first version of SpaceX\u2019s BFR spaceship could be ready to fly on \u201cshort up-and-down\u201d tests next year, similar to the vertical takeoff and landing demonstrations conducted at the company\u2019s Central Texas development base with testbeds before officials attempted landing full-up Falcon 9 rocket boosters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are building the first ship, the first Mars or interplanetary ship, right now, and I think we\u2019ll probably be able to do short flights, short sort of up-and-down flights probably in the first half of next year,\u201d Musk said Sunday during an appearance at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s discussion of the BFR ship Sunday echoed comments he made last month shortly after the first successful test flight of SpaceX\u2019s Falcon Heavy rocket \u2014 the world\u2019s most powerful launcher \u2014 which would be eclipsed in thrust and lift capacity by the BFR.<\/p>\n

In a briefing with reporters Feb. 6, Musk said the BFR spaceship \u2014 just one component of SpaceX\u2019s grandiose concept for sending large numbers of people to Mars \u2014 could begin short \u201chop\u201d tests in 2019 \u201cif we get lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

The billionaire entrepreneur revealed the design of the BFR \u2014 an acronym SpaceX says stands for \u201cBig Falcon Rocket\u201d \u2014 in a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress last year in Adelaide, Australia.<\/p>\n

The BFR design consists of a booster stage, powered by 31 methane-fueled Raptor engines producing nearly 12 million pounds of thrust, and an upper stage that doubles as an interplanetary transporter capable of carrying people, supplies, satellites, and huge propellant tanks that can be refilled in space.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A comparison of the size and performance of SpaceX\u2019s rockets: Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and BFR (left to right). Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The two pieces of the BFR would together stand around 348 feet (106 meters) tall and measure nearly 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter, just shy of the dimensions of the Saturn 5 rocket that sent astronauts to the moon. Musk said the BFR will be able to deliver a payload of up to 330,000 pounds \u2014 150 metric tons \u2014 to a low orbit just above Earth\u2019s atmosphere, a figure that exceeds the maximum lift capacity of the Saturn 5, while accounting for a fuel reserve and performance penalty for landing and reuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very big booster and ship,\u201d Musk said Sunday. \u201cThe liftoff thrust of this would be about twice that of a Saturn 5.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BFR is smaller than an earlier interplanetary launcher and transporter concept unveiled by Musk in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ship part is, by far, the hardest because that\u2019s going to come in from super-orbital velocities, like interplanetary Mars transfer velocities, moon transfer velocities. These are way harder than coming from Earth orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spaceship\u2019s high-speed returns will stress the craft\u2019s heat shield and structure beyond the temperatures and pressures experienced by a capsule re-entering the atmosphere from Earth orbit, or by a descending rocket stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cTesting that ship out is the real tricky part,\u201d Musk said Feb. 6. \u201cThe booster, I think \u2014 I don\u2019t want to get too complacent \u2014 but I think we understand reusable boosters. Reusable spaceships that can land propulsively, that\u2019s harder. We\u2019re starting with the hard part first.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX officials have not said how closely the design of the first test spaceship \u2014 sometimes called the Big Falcon Spaceship, or BFS \u2014 will match the final layout Musk presented in September in Adelaide.<\/p>\n

The spaceship design Musk revealed in September had a cluster of six Raptor engines \u2014 he later said the ship could have seven engines \u2014 and methane and liquid oxygen tanks containing almost a quarter-million pounds (1,100 metric tons) of cryogenic propellants for deep space burns and landing maneuvers. The spacecraft would stretch 157 feet (48 meters) long and have an internal pressurized volume exceeding that of an Airbus A380 jumbo jet, enough room for 40 passenger cabins.<\/p>\n

The Raptor engines can be throttled from 20 percent to 100 percent power, allowing on-board engine controllers to adjust their thrust as needed during powered descents through the atmospheres of Earth or Mars.<\/p>\n

SpaceX is already hotfire testing the Raptor engine, which is expected to generate around 380,000 pounds of thrust at full throttle.<\/p>\n

Musk said last month that SpaceX will likely conduct the first phase of spaceship testing at its South Texas launch site near Brownsville. Another option could be \u201cship-to-ship\u201d flights at sea, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost likely, it\u2019s going to happen at our Brownsville location because we\u2019ve got a lot of land with nobody around, so if it blows up, it\u2019s cool,\u201d he said. \u201cBy hop test, I mean it\u2019ll go up several miles and come down. The ship is capable of single stage to orbit if you fully loaded the tanks, so we\u2019ll do flights of increasing complexity. We really want to test the heat shield material, (and do) something like fly out, turn around, accelerate back real hard, and come in hot to test the heat shield.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk said last month he believes it is \u201cconceivable\u201d that the first launch of the BFR booster into Earth orbit could happen in three or four years. Missions into deep space would follow. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX\u2019s president and chief operating officer, said Monday at the Satellite 2018 conference in Washington that orbital test flights of the company\u2019s new vehicle could happen in 2020.<\/p>\n

He said in September that initial BFR flights to Mars could happen by 2022, with human voyages possible by 2024. Those target dates were \u201caspirational,\u201d he said at the time.<\/p>\n

Known for his bullish schedule pronouncements, Musk said Sunday: \u201cI\u2019m feeling pretty optimistic about the timeline, although I can be \u2026 People have told me that my timelines historically have been optimistic, so I\u2019m trying to recalibrate to some degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, Musk said in 2011 that the Falcon Heavy rocket \u2014 SpaceX\u2019s biggest rocket to date \u2014 would make its first test launch in 2013. The heavy-duty rocket took off for the first time last month.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s longtime ambition, set and steadied by Musk, has been to ferry humans to Mars to build a base, and eventually an interplanetary society. With the Trump administration\u2019s decision to redirect NASA\u2019s focus on returning astronauts to the moon\u2019s surface before going to Mars, Musk has highlighted the BFR\u2019s lunar capabilities in recent talks.<\/p>\n

The huge interplanetary ship could carry equipment and astronauts to a lunar base, Musk said, without needing to be refueled after it leaves Earth orbit. A mission to the surface of Mars and back to Earth will require a propellant depot on the red planet to generate fuel and oxidizer the ship\u2019s return trip.<\/p>\n

In addition to interplanetary flights, the BFR could haul huge satellites into orbit, such as wide-aperture space telescopes, or deploy numerous spacecraft in one mission.<\/p>\n

Musk said Sunday that the BFR, at least in the long-term, could cost less per flight than the Falcon 1 rocket, SpaceX\u2019s first orbital booster.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s amazing about this ship, assuming that we can make full and rapid reusability work, is that we can reduce the marginal cost per flight dramatically,\u201d Musk said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA BFR flight will actually cost less than our Falcon 1 flights did back in the day,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was about a $5 million or $6 million marginal cost per flight, and we\u2019re confident that BFR will be less than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But such low costs will depend on further advancements in rocket reuse. The shortest turnaround between flights of the same Falcon 9 booster has been five months, and SpaceX is still recouping its costly investment in rocket recovery and reusability.<\/p>\n

A new version of the Falcon 9 could propel another leap forward in SpaceX\u2019s reuse innovations.<\/p>\n

SpaceX is preparing an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket configuration called \u201cBlock 5\u201d for a debut launch as soon as next month. Some of the changes should allow engineers to more quickly prepare the booster for another flight, and the Falcon 9\u2019s Block 5 first stages are expected to be rated for more than two missions.<\/p>\n

Musk said SpaceX will pour more resources into the BFR after the Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket begins flying, and once the company\u2019s Crew Dragon capsule starts ferrying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis question of reusability is so fundamental to rocketry,\u201d Musk said Sunday. \u201cIt is the fundamental breakthrough that\u2019s needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s concept of the BFR spaceship deploying a satellite in orbit. Credit: SpaceX A team of SpaceX engineers is building a prototype of the spaceship Elon Musk hopes will one day carry people and cargo deep into the solar system, and it could begin low-altitude testing next year, kicking off a multi-step test campaign before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2873,291,1045,25,597,1563,316,3015],"class_list":["post-13937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-bfr","tag-commercial-space","tag-elon-musk","tag-launch","tag-raptor","tag-solar-system","tag-spacex","tag-sxsw-2018"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}