During his career, Ilon Mask has formed around him a reputation as a man who is not afraid to make very bold statements and promises. In 2002, driven by the desire to make space flights more accessible through the use of reusable rockets, he founded SpaceX. In April 2014, the whole world faded with glancing at the first successful landing of the Falcon 9 booster rocket. In February of this year, people genuinely believing in technological progress, to the envy of all ill-wishers, watched the launch of the heaviest carrier rocket in the world of Falcon Heavy, and then the synchronous landing of its two spent accelerators.
Yes, the Mask does not always go smoothly. But he does not hesitate to say this when he publishes videos in which he shows how one should not put rockets. During his time in SpaceX, the dream of reusable rockets was replaced by an even more ambitious goal - a manned flight to Mars and in the future the establishment of the first interplanetary human colony on the Red Planet. Realizing that with the help of Falcon Heavy this dream will not be possible to implement, SpaceX has engaged in the development of an even larger rocket Big Falcon Rocket (BFR).
The question of when this missile will be ready for launch was one of the topics discussed at the annual SXSW festival, recently held in Austin (Texas, USA), where Musk shared some details of his company's immediate plans with the audience and host Jonathan Nolan ( director and screenwriter, as well as the younger brother of the even more famous director Christopher Nolan).
During this interview, Mask again repeated his earlier statements that the first test flight of BFR is scheduled for 2019, and a full-fledged test launch of the BFR and the Big Falcon Spaceship (BFS) spacecraft will be scheduled in 2020. And although these forecasts look very optimistic (Mask is also famous for such a "sin", which he himself, however, does not hesitate to admit), the company's past successes in multiple launches, as well as the "Stakhanovite pace" of developing the necessary technologies make it possible to believe it . At least a little.
"Many people say that I'm too optimistic about the time of implementation. Therefore, we should make an amendment to this. What can I say now? At the moment we are building the first ship, the first interplanetary ship that will fly to Mars and in the future will be used for interplanetary flights. I think that the first short flights - take-offs and landings - of this ship will happen in the first half of next year, "Musk said during the interview.
What is a BFR booster? The BFR carrier rocket, formerly known as the Interplanetary Transport System, will be a two-stage system from the upper stage and the second stage / BFS spacecraft. After launching the launch vehicle and bringing the ship to a low earth orbit, the first stage will return to Earth and soften. More interesting. At the first stage, the installation of a new second stage in the form of a tanker with fuel will be carried out. After restarting the tanker will be disconnected from the BFR and installed on the BFS in orbit, refueling it, and then returning back to Earth with the first stage. After that, the spacecraft, tucked in, with supplies and crew on board, will launch its engines and continue the journey to Mars.
Despite the fact that individually many technologies and concepts were created and tested during the development, modernization, as well as within the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, the BFR rocket will become a launch system that will not resemble anything that was Running under the SpaceX flag before this.
According to plans, the BFR rocket will be significantly larger (hence, by the way, its unofficial name "Big fucking missile") Falcon 9 and Heavy, will have much more traction and carrying capacity. Mask spoke about the technical characteristics of the new carrier rocket during the presentation at the 68th meeting of the International Congress of Astronautics, held in late September last year in Australia. Then the head of SpaceX said that the height of the rocket will be 106 meters, with a diameter of 9 meters. It will carry 110 tons of fuel and will be able to bring to low Earth orbit up to 150 tons of payload, which is almost twice as high as the capabilities of Falcon Heavy. The return payload will be 50 tons at the same time.
"This is a very large accelerator and spacecraft. Thrust at take-off will be almost two and a half times more than when launching "Saturn-5" (a booster rocket used in the Apollo program to deliver astronauts to the moon). It will be able to put up to 150 tons of payload into orbit and will be completely reusable, "Musk said.
Even given the fantastic nature of the above statements, the most important challenges that will stand in the way of project implementation are not related to technology. The main difficulties will be associated with the cost of the project and its security, especially if you consider that this will be only the second project in history, which proposes the use of a spacecraft with the possibility of reuse. The first, we will recall, was a space shuttle, unless, of course, we consider only one flight of the Soviet "Buran", which is its almost complete copy.
If we talk about price, the space shuttle program again becomes an excellent example of what Mask and his company will face in the years to come. According to calculations in 2010 (shortly before the closure of the program), the Space Shuttle program cost the US government approximately $ 210 billion. Most of this amount was spent on servicing spacecraft between launches, as well as fuel. These kinds of costs by all means the company SpaceX wants (and is sure to be able to) reduce to a minimum, because only in this case BFR can become an economically profitable enterprise.
Answering the question about costs, Mask again noted the importance of technologies of reusability:
"The charm of this ship, provided that we can achieve its full reusability, will consist in the fact that we will significantly reduce the marginal cost of launching in this case. It will be significantly lower than now. Reusability is that fundamental part in rocket engineering. A breakthrough in this area is necessary. "
The economic principle of BFR will be the lower cost of launching an all-reusable large spacecraft for long-range flights, compared to launches of one-off missiles for meek travel that will be more expensive.
As an example, Musk quoted the cost of renting a fully loaded Boeing 747 for a flight from California to Australia, which will amount to half a million dollars, and the purchase of a new turboprop aircraft for $ 1.5 million, which even does not reach Australia, because small and not so powerful, as essentially larger Boeing. The same rule, according to Mask, will also work for missiles.
"The cost of launching the BFR will in fact be even lower than the cost of launching Falcon 1. The marginal cost was then about 5-6 million dollars per launch. We are confident that the launch of BFR will be cheaper. This is very important, because only so we can create bases on the Moon and Mars. It will become a kind of equivalent to the transnational railroad or ships, allowing to quickly cross the oceans. "
In addition to addressing the cost of production and maintenance, you will have to work hard on how to make the BFR rocket carrier completely safe. Without this, SpaceX will not go far with it. In this respect, the company can use the scheme that it used in the development of Falcon 9. Before carrying out a full test and verifying the safety of the launch of the spacecraft Dragon into orbit, SpaceX conducted many short launches and landings of its "bar" Grasshopper.
Artistic representation of the launch vehicle Space Launch System (SLS) and multifunctional spacecraft Orion
According to Mask during an interview at SXSW, the company plans to conduct the first suborbital launch of the BFR launch vehicle in 2019. The first orbital launch of the rocket together with the spacecraft could take place in 2020. And it seems that earlier announcements of the Mask about the first commercial launch of the BFR in 2022 and the manned flight in 2024 also continue to be valid.
For comparison: the same launch of Space Launch System (SLS), through which the aerospace agency NASA in the long term wants to get to Mars, is also scheduled for 2019. At the moment, it is known that the first mission of Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) is planning to send an unmanned Orion spacecraft around the Moon. Within the mission of EM-2, which is to be held in 2022 and will be manned, the first module of the Gateway lunar orbital station will be delivered to the orbit of the satellite. After that, it is planned to conduct several more similar missions to deliver additional modules and eventually the Deep Space Transport (DTS) spacecraft, which will become the means by which astronauts will fly to Mars. The first interplanetary mission of NASA, Exploration Mission 11 (EM-11), will happen no earlier than 2033. In other words, if the predictions made by Mask are correct, then SpaceX will be able to overtake NASA both in terms of carrying out autonomous and in terms of manned flights to Mars.
Concerning the question of who will decide to build and maintain permanent bases on the Moon and Mars, here it is still more vague. During the interview, Mask also stressed that on the example of BFR he and his company SpaceX want to show to other space agencies and organizations that the creation of interplanetary spacecraft is indeed possible, and thereby inspire them to similar developments.
The article is based on materials .
Comments
Post a Comment