Two starships exploded one after another, and Musk was angry with employees, and the company was at a critical moment.

Elon musk's biggest dream in this life is to send human beings to Mars. At present, there are many companies under the name of Musk, including Tesla, a pure electric vehicle manufacturing company. But in Musk's mind, space exploration technology companies should occupy the most important position. In the field of commercial aerospace, space exploration technology companies are undoubtedly at the forefront and even represent the future direction.

Musk and Space Exploration Technologies have completely staked their future on the starship transportation system. The starship transportation system consists of two parts: starship and super heavy rocket booster. Overall height120m, diameter 9m, and payload exceeding100t. Among them, the starship is 50 meters high, the propellant capacity can reach 1200 tons, the super-heavy rocket booster is 70 meters high and the thrust can reach 3400 tons.

Space exploration technology company is testing a series of starship prototypes and has tested several prototypes. Among them, the first full-featured full-scale SN8 prototype was launched on 65438+February 10 in 2020, but failed to slow down when landing, and crashed after falling heavily. The second full-scale SN9 prototype with complete functions was launched on February 3, 20021year, but the result was still insufficient deceleration, and it fell to the ground and became a flame. Next, the prototype SN 10 will be tested by flight test. The prototype SN 10 starship has arrived at the proving ground on1October 20th, 202165438+29th, and the flight test is initially expected to start within this month. After SN 10 prototype, there are SN 1 1, SN 12, SN 13, SN 14, SN 15 and Sn1. As Musk said, the starship prototype needs to iterate at least to SN20. In order to build a starship of 1.0 version. At the same time, the prototype of the first super-heavy rocket booster is said to have been built in half, and will also be used for testing by space exploration technology company.

Of course, most people prefer to succeed in everything rather than fail. For Musk, he can accept the ground explosion of the prototype SN8 starship, and said that the SN8 test flight was still successful; However, the prototype of SN9 starship still ended in a touchdown explosion, and Musk began to sit still.

According to Nasa Space Flight, a foreign space website, after the test flight of SN9 prototype ended in failure, Musk was angry and expressed strong dissatisfaction with the starship R&D team at the company meeting, pointing out that the starship R&D team was dragging its feet and the success probability was low. Even compared with Boeing, space exploration technology company is advancing at the speed of light every day, but in Musk's view, the progress of space exploration technology company is still not fast enough. Although the R&D team employees of Space Exploration Technology Company work hard every day, they want to do everything well and are willing to follow the boss like Musk. However, the SN9 prototype failed to land in the test flight, and Musk could not help but spread his anger to the employees.

The prototype test flight of SN8 starship ended in a hard landing explosion, but Musk praised all the staff at that time, saying that the test flight mission obtained "all the data we need", and he also said on Twitter, "Mars, here we come! ! "。 However, the prototype SN9 starship fell to the ground and exploded into flames, and Musk's attitude changed obviously, directly expressing strong dissatisfaction to employees. So, what is the reason behind it?

First of all, Musk and Space Exploration Technology have high expectations for the starship. How far the space exploration technology company can go next is the key to this starship. Once the starship is fully developed, it will bring an unimaginable future to the space exploration technology company. Otherwise, as it is now, space exploration technology companies rely on Falcon rockets (including Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy) to receive space launch orders, and the company's upper limit is basically clear. According to Musk's vision, the starship has been successfully developed, and will carry people and goods into orbit in the future, which can become a space vehicle between the earth and the moon and even to Mars. Therefore, from the general direction, try to guess that in Musk's style, even if he goes up the mountain or down the sea of fire, he will take the space exploration technology company to develop the starship.

Secondly, Space Exploration Technology Company and Starship are at a critical moment, because Space Exploration Technology Company participated in the Human Landing System (abbreviated as HLS) of Artimis manned lunar lander, and the tender for this project has been postponed until April.

65438127 October, NASA issued a notice to three teams participating in the HLS project, announcing that the contract would be extended for two months without compensation. These contracts will expire on February 28th. Cost-free contract renewal means that the contracts awarded by NASA to three teams in April 2020 will last until April 30, but no additional funds will be added. At the same time, NASA will have more time to decide which companies to award the "Option A" lunar module development contract.

It is worth mentioning that it is said that the available funds for the HLS project are much lower than the initial application amount of NASA. NASA applied for about $3.3 billion in the budget application for fiscal year 20021,but the final comprehensive appropriation bill promulgated in February 2020 only gave $850 million. In addition, in recent years, the annual total budget of NASA has basically stabilized at around $20 billion, and the United States may be less interested in manned landing on the moon and pay more attention to earth science.

In addition to Space Exploration Technology Company, the other two teams are the national team composed of Blue Origin+Lockheed Martin+Northrop Grumman Company+draper Company, and the small enterprise team composed of Dyne Technology. When the "two out of three" bidding is over, the team eliminated by NASA will no longer receive any funding from NASA. If the space exploration technology company fails in the bidding process, all subsequent R&D funds will have to pay for themselves. What about the other two teams? They are equally determined to win. From Musk's point of view, if space exploration technology companies want to win the "two out of three" bid, they must show more technologies to NASA before the bidding begins. However, the test flight of two prototypes SN8 and SN9 ended in a landing explosion, and NASA did not have much confidence in it.

Finally, another important reason is that the lunar module based on starship transportation system is obviously very difficult in technology. Because the starship is 50 meters high and weighs about 100 tons, such a big head, including Saturn V or energy rockets, can't put it into the moon orbit, so it can only fly to the moon by its own lunar module, and then space exploration technology companies need to successfully develop a recyclable starship system to reach a mature level. In addition, space exploration technology companies must also overcome the large-scale in-orbit refueling technology of low-temperature propellant for starships and overcome a series of safety, technology and policy problems that starships need to face. In terms of time, space exploration technology companies must race against time. It is not difficult to understand that SN8 and SN9 successively flew, both of which exploded when landing, which undoubtedly slowed down the research and development progress of the starship. Strangely, Musk is not in a hurry.

According to the plan of Space Exploration Technology Company, the future starship can not only carry satellites to the sky, but also transport astronauts and goods to the International Space Station, and also undertake the task of exploring the moon and immigrating to Mars. In other words, once Space Exploration Technology Company successfully develops the starship, the existing recovered Falcon 9 rocket and Falcon heavy rocket will inevitably be eliminated by Space Exploration Technology Company. I have to say that only Musk and his R&D team, a space exploration technology company, dare to think so. They are really fighting for a dream of Mars. A group of elites get together, and the boss is Musk. In order to realize a Mars migration plan that people can't reach today, what kind and how much impact it will bring to the world science and technology industry in the future is immeasurable now. The most unique ability of human beings is innovation and creation, and space exploration technology company obviously takes the inherent innovation of human beings to the extreme.