Dragon 2, a manned spacecraft that SpaceX is currently developing, will not be able to land using its rocket engines, as the company previously planned, according to the company's CEO and tycoon Elon Musk. He also said that he will soon update his plan for manning Mars, which he revealed last year, within the framework of which the company intends to build a launcher and a spaceship of enormous dimensions. According to Musk, the update will deal with more realistic ways of financing the ambitious plan.
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of the space company SpaceX, announced that the company's Dragon 2 spacecraft, which it is developing to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station starting next year, will not be able to land mechanically on a ground lander, as planned so far . Instead, it will land like traditional space capsules by parachutes in the middle of the sea. The entrepreneur and tycoon revealed the decision on Wednesday last week, at a conference dealing with research and development on the International Space Station and held in Washington, D.C. si.
spaceship eDragon 2 It is an upgrade of the company's current Dragon spacecraft, which is not capable of carrying humans and is used to bring supplies to the space station. The new spacecraft will be able to carry up to 7 astronauts, and its first manned mission is currently scheduled for May 2018.
Unlike the current Dragon spacecraft, Dragon 2 will have 8 engines added "Super Draco” which are produced by SpaceX in XNUMXD printing. The company assigned a dual purpose to these engines. The first and central goal is to enable the separation of the spacecraft from the launcher and save the lives of the astronauts in the event of a launch malfunction. The second goal, which has now been canceled, was to allow a motorized landing on a ground ramp back to Israel.
"It was a difficult decision," Musk said. "Technically, it still has [the ability to land powered], but it will have to land on a fairly soft pad, because we removed the little legs that pop out of the heat shield."
As implied by his words, the Super-Draco engines will remain in the spacecraft, but they will only be used for disconnection from the launcher in emergency cases, and not for landing. Instead, the spaceship will land in the middle of the sea using parachutes, similar to the historical spaceships of the United States such as the Apollo spaceships that brought man to the moon. The Russian Soyuz spacecraft, by the way, lands on the ground using parachutes and flash motors that are activated one meter before landing.
It should be noted that from the beginning SpaceX intended to land the spacecraft using parachutes. The company did not receive permission from NASA to use manned flights using the motorized landing method, which had never been tried before in a manned mission. So far, though, the company has intended to transition more advanced missions to powered landing.
According to Musk, the decision was made mainly due to the many resources that were required to train the system for manned missions. "It took a huge effort to qualify it as safe, especially for crew transportation," Musk said. "It doesn't seem like the right way to allocate resources right now," he added.
Watch: Test burn of Dragon 2's Super-Draco engines:
The meaning of the decision: the plan to land the Dragon 2 spacecraft on Mars will be canceled
The decision means that, apparently, SpaceX will cancel the program She announced Last year, launch an unmanned Dragon spacecraft to land on Mars. Just a few months ago the company announced the postponement of the task from 2018 to 2020, in order to be able to focus on more urgent tasks, especially The plan to launch two space tourists around the moon, aboard the Dragon 2 spacecraft late next year.
Musk noted that the company is looking at another way to land on Mars: "There was a time when I thought that the Dragon method for landing on Mars, where you have a heat shield at the base and rocket engines on the sides, is the right way to land on Mars. Today I am quite sure that this is not the right way and that there is a much better way."
Musk did not explain exactly which alternative way he meant, but later he did Tweet on the Twitter page His: "Certainly the plan is to make motorized landings on Mars, but with a much larger ship." Musk probably meant the giant spacecraft and launcher He announced them in September last year as part of his ambitious plan to establish a colony on Mars.
Musk is trying to make his Mars manning plan a reality
As mentioned, Musk revealed last year his plan for manning Mars, which is based on the construction of a huge launch system, known as "The interplanetary transport system” (Interplanetary Transport System). The system will include a giant launcher 122 meters high, which will be able to launch up to 300 tons into a low-earth orbit, and then land back to make repeat launches.
The cargo that the giant launcher will send into orbit will be a huge spaceship that can carry up to 100 people. Before leaving for the journey to Mars, the spacecraft will need to be refueled several times in orbit around the Earth, and upon arrival at the Red Planet, it will land on it using its rocket engines and a heat shield that will be installed in its interior. During the stay on Mars, the future team (some would say futuristic), will use the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the ice on the ground, in order to produce the fuel for the journey back to Earth.
Musk said at the conference last week that he intends to present an update to this plan, which will focus on finding ways to make it more realistic from a budgetary standpoint. “[The show] has evolved quite a bit since the last lecture. The most significant thing I deciphered is how to pay for this whole system to get to Mars. It's super expensive," said Musk.
Watch: a simulation video showing Musk's (not updated) plan for manning Mars:
According to Musk, to make the system more affordable, the company will reduce the enormous size of the launcher, so that it can also be used to launch commercial cargo into orbit around the Earth. "You modify it so that it will be able to do orbital activity around the Earth, in addition to activity on Mars," said Musk.
Musk said that he will probably present the update at the next international space conference, which will be held in September this year in the Australian city of Dale.
Musk: The Falcon Heavy may explode on its first test flight
Musk also lowered expectations regarding the success of the first test flight of the company's new launcher, Heavy falcon (Falcon Heavy). After several years of delays, the company is preparing for the first launch of the launcher at the end of this year.
The heavy Falcon consists of three first stages of the Falcon 9, the company's current and well-known launcher, with the central core consisting of the upper rocket stage, and the other two stages serving as side boosters. If the test flight is successful, the Falcon Heavy will become the most powerful active space launcher in the world, a title that the launcher currently holds Delta 4 is heavy. But Musk does not sound at all certain that the launch will be successful: "There is a lot of risk that accompanies the heavy Falcon. There is a very high chance that he will not make it to the track. I want to be sure and set expectations accordingly."
"I hope he will get far enough from the launch so he won't harm you. I will see it as a victory, to be honest." SpaceX, it should be mentioned, is currently dealing with consequences The explosion of the Falcon 9 launcher At the Cape Canaveral spaceport last year, where the Israeli satellite was destroyed Amos 6. The explosion caused heavy damage to the company's launch pad, and it is still working to restore it.
Musk explained that one of the difficult problems that accompanied the development of the heavy launcher was connecting the first three stages. "At first, it sounds very easy: just stick two [Falcon 9] first stages as side boosters. How hard will it be?" Musk said. "But then everything changes. All the loads change, the aerodynamics change completely, and the vibrations and the acoustics are tripled."
Musk said it was for this reason that the launcher's central first stage had to be redesigned. "The amount of load you put on the central core is crazy, because you have two super powerful accelerators that are also pushing the central core," Musk said. "That's why we had to redesign the entire chassis of the central core. It's not like the Falcon 9, because there is so much load on it."
Despite the possibility that the launcher will explode, Musk called on the public to come and watch the launch up close, "it is guaranteed to be exciting", he said.
See more on the subject on the science website:
- Will Elon Musk and SpaceX establish the first human colony on Mars?
- History in space: SpaceX first launched a Falcon 9 launcher with a used first stage
- SpaceX plans to launch two space tourists next year for a flight around the moon
Watch Musk's interview at the conference held last week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqYPmshyCDU
12 תגובות
Friends, don't be so pessimistic if there is a lot of desire it can be fast, it is not an unreasonable thing, but if all the physicists, and all the rich, and for a long time will free up their time and deal with the manning of Mars, it will go quickly, but there is none of that. So we'll wait a little longer and it will happen in the end, you'll see.
P.S. And all the questions, how, where, when, money, etc., leave it to the engineers "at Space X" anyway it won't get to them. And they will manage anyway. Just watch the progress from home and enjoy! Have fun!
Miracles
My gut feeling that an engineering solution will be found for this. They will find engineers with thinking outside the box and come up with a solution. You might surprise yourself and find the solution.
Life
I don't see how you can save fuel like that. In the end you have to bring the aircraft to a certain height and speed and for that you need a certain amount of energy. Are wings + air-breathing engine more efficient than a rocket engine? I don't think so, because wings create vortices that contain a lot of energy.
I agree that there is an advantage in that atmospheric oxygen can be used in the first stage and thus save weight, but the price is a longer stay in the same atmosphere.
Miracles
As for leaving the Earth, the idea of a hybrid engine was raised years ago. The aircraft takes off like a jet plane and at a certain altitude the plane's engines start working like rocket engines. The rationale for this idea is that the same plane/spaceship does not need to carry a monstrous amount of oxygen or any other type of fuel. He uses the fuel stock he has when the engines start working as rocket engines. As someone who knows the world of aviation, think about it. I guess there is an extensive professional literature on this. Try to upgrade this idea and here is the next Ph.D. Successfully.
Life
So we have already solved half the problem 🙂
Undercarriages and wings are complex and heavy systems, and in this case other systems are not spared, so you have to find a justification for adding them.
Wings are designed to provide lift in a relatively dense atmosphere, and when flying at low altitude and low speed, they are an excellent solution. What advantage do they provide for a vessel that needs to leave the atmosphere at a very high speed?
I can think of the idea of a winged craft that would lift spacecraft up and launch them from there. If Brett Ratten hadn't already implemented it 13 years ago - maybe I really would have had a doctorate 🙂
Miracles
I would not expect such a question from you. I'm only talking about the view from Earth. For the purpose of landing and taking off from Mars, the spacecraft will also be equipped with rocket engines for braking and taking off from Mars that will be in its belly or on its sides. Since you have a background in science and engineering, how about writing another doctorate that will be the subject. When you create this spaceship, it will bear your name with genius. What do you think of Nisim 1?
If you read carefully what I wrote, you would see that my intention is only to take off from the earth. As for landing and taking off from Mars, it will be necessary to equip the spacecraft with rocket engines that will be on its belly or on its sides. and will be used both as braking engines and for taking off from Mars. Since you studied science and have an engineering background, how about another PhD on rocket engines for a manned spacecraft to Mars to be used for landing and takeoff? Believe me, this will be pioneering work, and when such a spaceship is created, it will proudly bear your name.
Haim Mazar
How will you land on Mars? The lift depends on the air density and the square of the speed. So, if your landing speed here is 200 knots, you would need to land at 6,000 knots.
It's a little hard to stop…
Humanity could have reached there many years ago, but the main problem is a lack of will and resources
The question is that today there is a fundamental change in the same subject
Elon Musk really wants to bring humanity to Mars and he is a man of vision and also with receipts
But his plan for Mars from the beginning was quite crude and did not address the many different components he left to others (who said that someone else would pick up the gauntlet) even without the human being in the equation, a huge spaceship is launched and sending it there is a huge task,
Space is a very complicated business and as soon as humans are added to the equation, the level of complexity increases significantly,
The problem in space is that even the smallest part that breaks down can crush the whole mission, so what do you do to prevent this? Many tests are done on each component, they produce it from the most expensive components, everything is double and triple to prevent failures and all this makes the mission very expensive
There are a lot of problems with sending people to Mars, perhaps the most difficult of all in the long term is the weak gravity
It may also be a solution with a centrifugal system that creates 2/3 artificial gravity + 1/3 the gravity of Mars
But it will be expensive and complicate life there in a very significant way,
Even beyond Elon Musk, ideas of terraforming a planet can create other problems today in the atmosphere
On Mars it is one thousandth of the Earth Let's say that we manage to create the atmosphere at a pressure of one atmosphere just to find out
that now there are storms of enormous intensity that last for months and will cause damage to buildings on the ground.
Even on Earth, we have difficulty knowing in the long term what the atmospheric models will be in the future, so is there a reliable model of what will happen on Mars with one atmosphere, what behavior will it have?
It's time to change the whole concept. Go in a new direction of spaceships taking off and landing at every airport. I leave here with a call to entrepreneurs interested in astronomy to start thinking in this direction.
Launching a manned mission to Mars will not be possible before the year 2035, there are many things that are scientifically possible today but their road to reality is still long, such as a device that produces fuel from water and carbon dioxide on Mars, there are still many, many challenges to overcome in order to carry out a mission that will take Humans to Mars and bring them back safely.