{"id":18766,"date":"2017-10-14T21:19:58","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T13:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacexs-elon-musk-explains-how-his-big-rockets-short-hops-will-lead-to-giant-leaps\/"},"modified":"2017-10-14T21:19:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-14T13:19:58","slug":"spacexs-elon-musk-explains-how-his-big-rockets-short-hops-will-lead-to-giant-leaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacexs-elon-musk-explains-how-his-big-rockets-short-hops-will-lead-to-giant-leaps\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX\u2019s Elon Musk explains how his big rocket\u2019s short hops will lead to giant leaps"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_369387\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-369387\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-369387\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/171014-musk-stage-630x537.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"537\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/171014-musk-stage-630x537.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/171014-musk-stage-768x655.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/171014-musk-stage-1260x1074.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/171014-musk-stage.jpg 1266w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-369387\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">SpaceX founder Elon Musk discusses his plan to build a \u201cBig Falcon Spaceship\u201d at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia. Musk followed up with an \u201cAsk Me Anything\u201d chat on Reddit. (SpaceX via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>SpaceX CEO says he \u201cchickened out\u201d and made the design for the monster spaceship he\u2019s planning to send to Mars a little less monstrous&nbsp;\u2014 in order to make the concept a lot more realistic.<\/p>\n<p>He also confirmed that testing for the BFR, euphemistically known as the \u201cBig Falcon Rocket,\u201d would begin with suborbital short-hop tests on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Musk\u2019s frank talk came today during an \u201cAsk Me Anything\u201d chat session conducted on Reddit\u2019s space forum. More than 10,000 comments streamed in during the session, which Musk had promised to hold in the wake of September\u2019s unveiling of the latest BFR concept at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>Musk says the BFR would be used not only to send settlers to Mars starting in the 2020s, but also to go on trips to the moon and other interplanetary destinations, deploy and retrieve satellites in Earth orbit, and take passengers on suborbital space trips anywhere on Earth in an hour or less. In short, for any space mission that SpaceX has in mind.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Making Life Multiplanetary\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tdUX3ypDVwI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Redditors were anxious to get into the technical points of Musk\u2019s BFR design, and Musk was only too happy to oblige. Here are some of the high points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Musk joked that the maximum thrust of the BFR\u2019s methane-fueled Raptor rocket engines was downsized because \u201cwe chickened out.\u201d Actually, the downsizing was roughly in line with how much the BFR\u2019s overall size was reduced since the first version of the design was unveiled a year ago, Musk said. He noted that more engines with lower thrust provided more versatility, plus a bigger margin of safety in case one of the engines failed.<\/li>\n<li>The initial test flights of the BFR will begin with the combination upper stage and passenger compartment, known as the BF Ship or BFS. \u201cWill be starting with a full-scale Ship doing short hops of a few hundred kilometers altitude and lateral distance,\u201d Musk said. Those tests would be followed by orbital-scale BFS flights, and then tests of the full BFR, including the BF Booster.<\/li>\n<li>Some parts of the BFR\u2019s Raptor engines would be 3-D printed from metal, but most of the parts will be machined forgings. \u201cWe developed a new metal alloy for the oxygen pump that has both high strength at temperature and won\u2019t burn,\u201d Musk said.<\/li>\n<li>So far, only scaled-down prototypes have been test-fired, but Musk said it should be \u201cvery simple\u201d to scale up the engine firings to full power. \u201cThe objective is to meet or exceed passenger airline levels of safety,\u201d he said. \u201cThat will be especially important for point to point journeys on Earth. The advantage of getting somewhere in 30 mins by rocket instead of 15 hours by plane will be negatively affected if \u2018but also, you might die\u2019 is on the ticket.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Musk made clear that the BFR would not glide through the air the way the space shuttle did, and thus it\u2019s won\u2019t be necessary to have large wings or a tail. \u201cTails are lame,\u201d he wrote.<\/li>\n<li>One Redditor asked how much radiation shielding the BFR would have. \u201cAmbient radiation damage is not significant for our transit times,\u201d Musk replied. \u201cJust need a solar storm shelter, which is a small part of the ship.\u201d Then he added a quip that appeared to downplay the health effects of space travel: \u201cBuzz Aldrin is 87.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Another asked how much food, water and infrastructure would be sent along with Mars settlers. \u201cOur goal is to get you there and ensure the basic infrastructure for propellant production and survival is in place,\u201d Musk said. \u201cA rough analogy is that we are trying to build the equivalent of the transcontinental railway. A vast amount of industry will need to be built on Mars by many other companies and millions of people.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Musk said SpaceX was already \u201cpretty far along\u201d on the design of a processing plant for making oxygen and methane fuel on Mars. \u201cIt\u2019s a key part of the whole system,\u201d he wrote.<\/li>\n<li>Musk would love to have a high-bandwidth communication link and planetary internet at Mars. When one of the Redditors geeked out on the subject, Musk called that person a \u201cnerd\u201d but provided additional musings: \u201cIt would make sense to strip the headers out and do a UDP-style feed with extreme compression and a CRC check to confirm that the packet is good, then do a batch resend of the CRC-failed packets. Something like that. Earth to Mars is over 22 light-minutes at max distance. Three light-minutes at closest distance. So you could Snapchat, I suppose. If that\u2019s a thing in the future.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>He had a two-word answer for a question about whether he\u2019d put a tunnel boring machine on the first BFR flight heading to Mars, perhaps to mine water ice and minerals there. \u201cMore boring!\u201d Musk said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In addition to geeking out over his BFR vision, Musk slipped in a couple of wry side comments: For example, he joked that he planned to use Harry Potter\u2019s Incendio spell to heat up the BFR\u2019s propellants and auto-pressurize the tanks. In another exchange, he acknowledged that he was \u201cactually drinking whiskey right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, that explains your answers,\u201d one of his fans on Reddit wisecracked.<\/p>\n<p><em>For more, check out this table of Redditors\u2019 questions and Musk\u2019s answers, or scan the entire AMA transcript.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SpaceX founder Elon Musk discusses his plan to build a \u201cBig Falcon Spaceship\u201d at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia. Musk followed up with an \u201cAsk Me Anything\u201d chat on Reddit. (SpaceX via YouTube) SpaceX CEO says he \u201cchickened out\u201d and made the design for the monster spaceship he\u2019s planning to send to Mars a [&hellip;]<\/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":[2873,1045,3575,367,4950,4815,316],"class_list":["post-18766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-bfr","tag-elon-musk","tag-interplanetary-transport-system","tag-mars","tag-mars-colonial-transporter","tag-reddit-ama","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18766"}],"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=18766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}