Starship could be a game-changer for space travel
Whatever Twitter CEO Elon Musk does is bound to become a spectacle. The test launch of the Starship rocket built by Musk-owned SpaceX scheduled for April 20 is no exception. The rocket would be the heaviest ever to take off from the earth. It was all set to zoom on its maiden flight on Monday morning, but the launch was called off due to a last-minute hitch during fuel loading though the countdown was continued till 10 seconds before the scheduled ignition time.
Starship is 120 metres tall, compared to 55 metres of the now-grounded space shuttle of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Its payload capacity is nearly five times that of the shuttle.
When it gets launched, the rocket’s flight duration will be about 90 minutes. It will fly east over the Gulf of Mexico and between the Straits of Florida, get into space 100 km above the earth’s surface and then re-enter the atmosphere, finishing off near Hawaii after nearly encircling the earth.
Both rocket and the spacecraft will splash down into the sea, rather than making a soft landing on a spaceport. SpaceX has tested different stages, systems and software of the spaceship in dozens of flights in the past years (with a few of them exploding too), and Thursday’s launch will be the first fully integrated flight of the mega rocket.
In the past two decades, SpaceX has developed numerous space technologies and demonstrated that rockets can be partially or fully reused. Normally, a rocket burns down after propelling a satellite into a designated orbit. They are expendable. So, for every launch one has to have a new rocket which makes satellite launches a costly and time-consuming affair. SpaceX wants to change this and has developed fully reusable rockets. Its first operational partially reusable spacecraft is Dragon which is capable of carrying up to seven passengers to and from the earth’s orbit and beyond. It has been used for ferrying astronauts to space and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) since 2020. It is the first certified private spacecraft to take humans to the space station. Dragon is powered by Falcon 9 rocket which is also reusable.
The Starship is the next-generation spacecraft, powered by a new rocket named Super Heavy. Once operational, it will be ‘a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to the earth’s orbit, the moon, Mars and beyond,’ according to SpaceX. Thursday’s flight is only the first step towards validating several new technologies and making the vehicle capable of transporting humans.
The size of the spacecraft is astounding — it will be able to transport 100 persons. It will enable the launch of multiple large satellites and space telescopes, as well as the transport of cargo not just to the ISS, but to the moon where NASA plans to build a base in the future. The space agency has already signed up with SpaceX to provide a human landing system for its Artemis lunar mission. Before the crewed mission, SpaceX plans to land an uncrewed Starship on the lunar surface.
In addition to the plans to land on the moon and take on interplanetary missions, Starship has aroused curiosity for ‘point-to-point’ travel on the earth too. The company claims that it can disrupt air transport with the Starship as most international long-distance trips would be completed in 30 minutes or less. Besides the speed advantage, such travel will be much smoother as the Starship will travel outside the earth’s atmosphere, which lacks friction and there is no turbulence and weather disturbance. This is, of course, the long-term vision and its realisation will take a lot many tests over the next many years.
Interestingly, India has been working on the concept of a reusable space vehicle for a long time. It was first envisaged by former President APJ Abdul Kalam while he was still the head of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in the 1990s. He called it Hyperplane which was to be a single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle. Kalam first proposed it as a space plane that could fire missiles with smaller propulsion systems without being intercepted by the enemy. During his presidency, Kalam advocated the idea of making space transportation cost-effective by using reusable vehicles to launch satellites.
Since then, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been working on technological building blocks of its Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV). In May 2016, the space agency first demonstrated the re-entry of its winged vehicle in a hypersonic flight experiment. Earlier this month, it conducted another crucial technological test for RLV. It was to test autonomous landing system. The RLV prototype was flown as an underslung load of an IAF helicopter and dropped mid-air at a height of 4.5 km. It was to test certain technologies in conditions similar to those experienced by a space vehicle upon re-entry into the atmosphere. The unmanned RLV made a precise landing at a high speed (350 kmph) at the Aeronautical Test Range, Chitradurga, Karnataka.
Separately, the ISRO a few years ago tested the scramjet engine that can power conventional satellite launch vehicles as well as a future RLV. All these developments form a part of the ISRO’s launch-vehicle platform called Avatar. With the latest test, the ISRO says, “The dream of an Indian reusable launch vehicle arrives a step closer to reality.”
Being a private company, SpaceX has been able to take the risks associated with the space business and has moved forward, undeterred by inevitable failures during the experimental and testing phase. Unlike state-funded agencies such as NASA and ISRO, which have long timelines and funding constraints, private companies like SpaceX have ambitious timelines and clear commercial goals. This has lessons for India where the space sector has been opened to private players. Many startups are working in different segments of the space business, but we still lack a maverick like Musk. The road to a reusable space vehicle is long and challenging and it needs both ambition and technology.
