Starship - A milestone towards Mars

Have you ever wondered about travelling from one place to another place on earth from space. Yeah space you heard it right space. I know you think all this is just seen in science fiction movies and novels. Elon Musk is like the director of such a movie and he is too serious about his dream of settling on the red planet. Elon Musk and SpaceX have been developing spacecraft which can travel in space. As a fan of science fiction this looks kinda crazy to me.

SpaceX Rocket

What is starship?

Interplanetary transportation system or Big Falcon rocket or Starship is a flying vehicle which somewhat looks like a spacecraft and which is being developed under Elon Musk and its budding team of SpaceX from 2012. It's first iteration was made public in September 2019 at Boca Chica, Texas. After which it made quite a hype on the internet. And it is stated that one day Starship will carry both people and cargo to different places or to the world beyond.

Why do we need this?

Due to Deteriorating health of our mother earth, the need to survive and to move to a new planet is increasing day by day. The need to establish a space colony on the red planet and to terraform the red planet itself will remain a dream because the biggest problem to reach mars is- to reach mars. Let's just admit that we have only stepped on the moon and did nothing more than that and the vehicles which were used only supported limited services. But for the purpose of colonizing a planet we need more space, equipments and most importantly we need a vehicle which can carry more people and more cargo on mars. With starship all such problems are taken care of !

Mission to mars

With countries like India, Russia, China etc racing to establish their name in the history of space exploration on mars, SpaceX is ahead in the competition. SpaceX was established to achieve the goal of establishing a human colony on Mars one day. For this purpose SpaceX invented fast, strong and more importantly ‘reusable’ rockets. Due to SpaceX's healthy competition, it is building multiple prototypes at different locations like MK1 at Boca Chica, Texas and MK2 at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Starship specifications

Starship Raptor engines 

Starship is a two stage rocket propulsion system. Out of which the first stage is a super heavy rocket and the second stage is the starship itself. The second stage consists of 6 raptor engines- 3 for propulsion in outer space and rest for escaping earth's atmosphere. The first stage, the super heavy rocket consists of 37 raptor engines which when combined with the starship makes it the world's most powerful spacecraft ever developed. They both are fueled with supercooled cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen. The outer body was supposed to be made of carbon fibre but was later replaced by stainless steel because of its cheap cost and high resistance to heat and it looks awesome on a starship. The dimensions of starship and the super heavy combined is 122m(400 ft) in height and 9m(30 ft) in diameter. It is estimated that on the earth starships would carry around 1000 passengers but as for long runs like from earth to mars it is estimated to be around 100 passengers approximately.

How will starship work?

Starship

The starship will launch from the floating platform called the space board and once it reaches the outer atmosphere the super heavy will detach itself from the starship and will come back to earth like other SpaceX rockets. While the starship will travel in space until it reaches its destination, after reaching the destination the spacecraft will enter the atmosphere and then adjust itself at 60 degrees . When reached optimum height landing thrusters will get powered on and the spacecraft will land vertically on a landing station or space board as they call it. It is stated that it would take approximately 30 minutes to travel from Los Angeles to Toronto, Tokyo to new Delhi etc . Musk stated that starship services may start by 2021.

Musk has suggested that the hyperloop transit system can be used to ferry passengers from the hyperloop stations to the space board where they can board the starship.

Recent updates and launch history

SN6 starship prototype

Spacex tested its new prototype the SN6 on Thursday September 3rd, a week after its SN5 test. SN6 flew up to 150 m the same as SN5 and both are made up of the same material 301 steel. Both were almost identical and had some minor changes. Till today no launches have been made by SpaceX starship, it is still in development.

Potential

With all these powerful and reusable rockets and its estimated low cost, it may overtake other forms of transportation. It will also replace other rocket systems for space travel which are being currently used by space giants like NASA,ROSCOSMOS AND ISRO. It can also open doors to space tourism, colonizing Mars, Earth cargo delivery, reusable lunar landers on moon, flights around on Earth under one hour etc. All this will create new opportunities and jobs for the future generations.

Public opinion

Such a mission excites people to the point they become a fan of the technology itself. But we should consider all the risks and factors that may cause problems because of such a mission. The starship craft is reprehended by people as it can develop cancer in the person travelling to space, as space is full of solar radiation. To which Musk said that the time for such a trip to mars is too brief to increase chances of cancer. Apart from all this, people are really excited to travel in such a spacecraft.

With all the missions and projects like Starlink, Neuralink and Starship Elon Musk has spellbound people around the globe and these people are really looking up to Elon Musk and are really excited to be a part of his journey.