Elon Musk：星際火箭接近進入軌道

 

Rockets line-up    (Source: BBC)

Recently BBC News on-line reported the following:

Elon Musk: Starship rocket close to going orbital

Jonathan Amos - BBC Science Correspondent

Fri, February 11, 2022, 7:04 AM

Elon Musk is hopeful he can launch his new monster rocket system in perhaps a couple of months from now.

In a presentation made while standing in front of what he calls the Starship, the US entrepreneur said the vehicle was close technically to being ready.

Much depends now on the Federal Aviation Administration. It's the licensing authority and it will not issue a permission to fly until an environmental assessment is complete.

"I think we're tracking to have the regulatory approval and hardware readiness around the same time," he told the audience at his SpaceX company's R&D facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

"Hopefully, you know, basically a couple of months for both."

And Mr. Musk added: "I feel at this point highly confident that we'll get to orbit this year."

Mr. Musk said that if the FAA process demanded further investigations, it would lead to a delay of many months as flight operations were shifted to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where another launch pad for Starship is under construction.

Thursday's presentation was the first formal update Mr. Musk had given on the progress of Starship's development in two years.

And while the level of activity at Boca Chica in the intervening time has been intense, Mr. Musk didn't reveal much that wasn't already public knowledge.

He discussed niche engineering details on rocket engine design, which will have delighted super-fans, and there was a glossy new animation that envisaged a crewed Starship mission to Mars, but the SpaceX CEO was shy about talking through the business opportunities that were emerging for the new launch system.

"There's going to be some future announcements that I think people will be pretty fired up about," he said. "There are a lot of additional customers that will want to use Starship [but] I don't want to steal their thunder; they're going to make their own announcements."

At just under 120m (390ft) in height, the new SpaceX rocket system is the biggest ever devised.

When it eventually takes to the sky, it will get off the pad with more than twice the thrust of the vehicles that sent men to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s.

The main engines on the Apollo Saturn V rockets delivered some 35 meganewtons (nearly 8 million pounds of force) when ignited. The first stage of Starship, which is called Super Heavy, should achieve around 75 meganewtons.

The inaugural test flight - whenever it happens - will see the Super Heavy booster hurl the Starship into space for a 90-minute, once-around-the-Earth trip, which will end with a disposal "landing" in waters off the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific. The Super Heavy itself will be ditched in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ultimately, though, SpaceX wants both segments of future vehicles to make controlled touchdowns, on land or on sea platforms, so they can be re-used.

At Boca Chica, the launch tower sports enormous mechanical arms, nicknamed "chopsticks", that would endeavor to catch Super Heavy as it hovered near the ground. These arms would then place the booster straight back on its launch mount, ready for the next mission.

Mr. Musk says the Starship system, once fully developed, will be more than capable of taking humans to the Moon and Mars, and the US space agency (Nasa) has already contracted SpaceX to provide a version of Starship to place astronauts on the lunar surface later this decade.

The rocket system could also ferry people and cargo quickly around the globe. Putting satellites in orbit is another obvious application. Indeed, Mr. Musk sees Starship as central to the ongoing deployment of his Starlink orbital broadband network.

"Once we make this work, it's an utterly profound breakthrough in access to orbit" he said.

"When aircraft first came along, they were viewed as toys. When the Wright Brothers first took off, most people were just riding horses; they would not have imagined that there would be tens of thousands of aircraft flying to every corner of the world. So, this really could be a profound situation and we really can't even imagine all the use-cases at this point."

Translation

埃隆馬斯克(Elon Musk)希望能在幾個月後發射他的巨無霸火箭系統。

這位美國企業家站在他所稱的星際飛船前進行的一次演說中說，這飛船在技術上已經接近準備就緒。

現在很大程度上取決於聯邦航空管理局。它是發出許可機構，在環境評估完成之前不會頒發飛行許可。

馬斯克在德克薩斯州 Boca Chica的 SpaceX 公司研發設施告訴觀眾: “我們正在注意進度, 我認為在同一時間會獲得監管批准和硬件準備” 。

“希望的是，你知道，两件事基本上只用兩個月” 。

馬斯克先生補充說： “在這一點上，我對我們今年將進入軌道充滿信心” 。

馬斯克表示，如果聯邦航空局的程序要求進一步調查，這將導致延誤數月，因為飛行操作被轉移到佛羅里達州的肯尼迪航天中心，那裡正在建造另一個星際飛船發射台。

週四的演講是馬斯克兩年來首次正式更新星際飛船的開發進展。

雖然在此期間在 Boca Chica 的活動非常緊湊，但馬斯克先生並沒有透露太多尚未公開的信息。

他討論了火箭發動機設計的專門工程細節，這將讓超級粉絲感到高興，並且有一個表面上有吸引力，時尚，並暗示財富的新動畫,去設想了載人星際飛船前往火星的任務，但 SpaceX 的首席執行官不願談論由新的發射系統正在引發出的商機。

他說“未來會有一些公告，我認為人們會非常興奮” ; “還有很多其他客戶想要使用 星際飛船 [但] 我不想搶走他們的風頭；他們會發佈自己的公告” 。

新的 SpaceX 火箭系統高度是僅僅不到 120m（390 英尺），是有史以來最大的火箭系統。

當它最終升空時，它的起飛推力將是超過 1960 年代和 1970 年代將人類送上月球的飛行器的兩倍多。

阿波羅土星五號火箭的主發動機在點燃時產生了大約 35 兆牛頓（近 800 萬磅的力）。星際飛船的第一段，稱為"超重型"，應該達到大約 75 兆牛頓。

首次試飛 - 無論何時發生 - 都將看到"超重型"助推器將星際飛船送入太空，進行 90 分鐘的環繞地球之旅，最後將在太平洋夏威夷群島附近海域進行一次棄置 “著陸” 。超重型本身將被拋棄在墨西哥灣裏。

但最終，SpaceX 希望未來飛船的兩個部分都能夠在陸地或海上平台上進行可控著陸，以便它們可以重複使用。

在 Boca Chica，發射塔裝有巨大的機械臂，綽號“筷子”，當超重型在近地面懸停時，它會努力抓住它。然後，這些臂會將助推器直接放回其發射架上，為下一次任務做好準備。

馬斯克先生說，星際飛船系統一旦完全開發，將不僅能夠將人類帶到月球和火星，而且美國航天局 (Nasa) 已經與 SpaceX 簽訂合同，提供一個星際飛船版本, 在這十年較後期將宇航員送上月球的表面。

火箭系統還可以在全球範圍內快速運送人員和貨物。將衛星送入軌道是另一個明顯的應用。事實上，馬斯克先生認為星際飛船是他正在進行的 Starlink 軌道寬帶網絡部署的核心。

他說: “一旦我們完成這項工作，這將是進入軌道的一個徹底的突破” 。

“飛機剛出現的時候，還被當成玩具。萊特兄弟剛起飛的時候，大多數人只是騎著馬，沒想到將會有上萬架飛機飛到世界的每一個角落。所以，這真的可能是一個奧妙的情況，我們此時真的無法想像出所有應用例子” 。

       So, while Elon Musk is looking forward to launch his new monster rocket system in a couple of months, I am eager to know the performance of this Starship. If successful, it could revolutionize the ways in access to orbit and make the mission to Mar a possibility.