SpaceX Logs Another First in Space Travel
Achieving another first for humanity, SpaceX on Oct. 13 recovered intact the entire first stage of its massive Starship rocket at its original launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas. The accomplishment was immediately hailed by NASA Director Bill Nelson, who offered his congratulations, adding that “continued testing will prepare us for the bold missions that lie ahead — including traveling to the South Pole region of the Moon and then on to Mars.” This is the fifth test flight of Starship, the biggest rocket in the world, and dozens more test flights are planned.
The first stage, or booster, of the rocket stands over 70 meters tall, and the entire rocket, with the second stage, is just over 121 meters, the tallest in the world. The Starship is equipped with 33 Raptor engines (made completely in the United States, by SpaceX), the most powerful rocket engines in existence. Both the rocket body and its valuable engines were recovered in the landing on Oct. 13. In addition to further reducing the cost of a launch, by eliminating the need for deployment of a sea-based landing pad, this new development will also speed up the “recycle” time, allowing for quicker turnaround and re-use of the rocket, which means additional savings.
According to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, the company plans to launch new tests within a few months aimed at recovering the upper stage as well.“Hopefully early next year, we will catch the ship too”, he wrote in a post on X Oct. 15.
To understand how important the accomplishment is, one must realize that while a rocket is traveling “up” during its launch, it is also traveling “sideways,” to the east, taking advantage of the Earth’s eastward rotation to increase its relative velocity. This “heavy” lifting phase consumes the bulk of a rocket’s fuel and power, as the pull of gravity lessens as greater altitude is reached. From the dawn of the space age, the “spent” first stage was simply allowed to “drop” back to Earth, landing in the Atlantic Ocean or, in the case of China or Russia, in the Pacific, and disappearing forever as it sunk to the bottom. The U.S. Air Force even has a program titled the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle which has cost U.S. taxpayers billions over its 30 years.
That reality began to crumble in 2016, when SpaceX (after only a handful of failed attempts beginning in 2015) first succeeded in recovering a first-stage rocket, landing it on a barge floating in the Atlantic Ocean. The first stage had been fitted with software to keep it vertical upright, and used its own engines to slow the rocket back down to zero at the point of landing. The recovered craft was shipped back to Cape Canaveral, where the engines were cleaned and the craft reassembled for another launch. SpaceX relaunched its first “recycled” rocket the following year and has continued to do so ever since.
To achieve the landing at the launch site, the SpaceX rocket did not simply “fall” back to Earth, it retraced its own steps, a feat which required both improved navigational software and controlled firing of its own engines, this time for re-entry. The achievement serves to “close” the launch cycle, taking humanity one step further towards becoming a multi-planetary species.
