Mars immigrant spacecraft

Musk, a technology madman, has brought us many beautiful visions of future technology. His starship SN is one of them. The goal of the starship SN project, which is operated by his subsidiary Space Exploration Technology Company, is to send humans to Mars. Musk plans to immigrate 1 10,000 to Mars within 30 years. The Stararrow SN spacecraft is a means of transportation to and from Mars, which is equivalent to the "Star Bus" between the Earth and Mars, and can transport 65,438 vehicles at a time.

In order to achieve this goal, Musk and his team of space exploration technology companies have been working hard. So far, the starship has tested 10 times, but unfortunately, on March 4th, the starship SN 10 exploded again.

The starship SN 10 is considered as the first prototype of the starship plan, and its launch time has been postponed many times. At 6: 00 pm EST14, it finally ignited in a space facility in Texas, and the process of ignition and ascent was very smooth. Its goal this time is to rise to the height of 10 km. In the process of approaching the target, the three raptor engines of the starship SN 10 turned off one after another, and then began to descend, and completed the overturning action at high altitude. At a height of 2 km from the ground, the three engines were ignited one by one and the attitude was adjusted to recovery landing mode. Finally, they successfully landed on the ground, but the landing position was a little far from the target center, and they landed on a concrete plate on the edge of the launch pad, with a slightly skewed posture and a damaged lower baffle, but overall.

At this time, everyone cheered, and the space exploration technology company thought it was "finished", and the official closed the live broadcast, so it was necessary to celebrate the victory. However, no one expected that the starship SN 10 suddenly exploded seven minutes after landing, and the landing platform instantly turned into a sea of fire. The whole starship was also blown up to the sky, and the fireball went straight into the sky hundreds of meters, and was swallowed up by the fireball within a diameter of hundreds of meters around, and the starship itself became a fireball.

The cause of the explosion is thought to be a fuel leak in the fuel tank. When SN 10 landed, the engine flame caused the arrow to catch fire, and it never went out after landing. Finally, the flame ignited the leaked fuel, causing the whole hull to explode.

This is the third explosion of the starship. Perhaps the technical requirements are getting more and more complicated and the tasks to be completed are getting higher and higher. Since the starship SN8, there has been a problem in the test process. When SN8 landed, it hit the landing platform directly because it landed too fast, and was blown into a pile of fragments. SN9 is even worse. When it landed, it didn't even have time to adjust its attitude and fell to the launch pad. Musk and spaceX had hoped that the launch of the starship SN 10 would save face, but it exploded in the end.

The "triple bombing" of the starship also said that the technology of the starship project needs to be improved and the details are not in place. In its current state, it is impossible to expect it to fly to Mars to carry out personnel transportation tasks. There is still a long way to go before this project can reach the practical stage.

However, space exploration technology company officials still believe that the experiment has reached the stage goal. For example, its air attitude control is still relatively good. Next, SpeceX will launch the star arrow SN 1 1. What will happen? Let's wait and see.

References:

"Observer Network" March 4 article "Musk's new SN 10 spacecraft successfully landed and then exploded"