Elon Musk, the founder of Space X, also wants to fly the stars, which will need to be specialized in space inflaming. NASA can soon rely on the starchy and other large -scale commercial rockets to launch astronauts from Earth. The Trump administration has proposed to cancel NASA’s space launch system rocket after two more flights in favor of low -cost commercial powers.
Before any of these are possible, Space X will have to prove that it has overcome the failures in the last two test flights. Both flights failed at the same time – eight minutes later near the lift off near the end of the ship’s engine firing. Space X investigators operating under the supervision of the Federal Aviation Administration determined the flight of the Starshap test in January when the property leak caused a rocket’s AFT cart, or an attack. As a result, rocket engines and ultimately broken.
Engineers concluded that the leakage is mostly due to vibration while climbing the ship’s space. The vibration was resonated with the natural frequency of the vehicle, which intensified the intensity beyond the surface of SpaceX. For the next test flight on March 6, Space X changed its raptor engines in the ship’s feed lines, adjusting the property temperature, and blew the engines on a new layout of throttle.
But this did not solve the problem. Once again, the starch engine was cut off very quickly, and the rocket broke down before falling to the ground. Space X said that the “enthusiastic event” in the Iftar part of the starch resulted in the loss of several repeater engines, after which the attitude was overcome and the loss of communication with the ship.
The match between the two failures suggests a potential design issue with the upgraded “Block 2” version of the Starsing, which debuted in January and re -flown in March. The starchy block 2 is slightly taller than the ship’s Space X, which is used in the first six flights of the rocket, which includes re -designed flats, improved batteries and avionics, and in particular, a new fuel feed line system for ship raptor vacuum engines.
SpaceX has not released the results of the Flight 8 failure investigation, and the FAA has not yet issued a launch license for Flight 9. Similarly, Space X has not released any information about the changes in the stars for next week’s flight.
What do we know about the starchy vehicle that is for a flight 9-designed ship 35-that is, it has made some efforts to complete the entire period of test firing. Space X completed an engine’s static fire on April 30, which re -starts the reptor engine in space. Then, on May 1st, Space X eliminated six engine test firing before its planned 60 seconds arrived. The videos caught by the test media showed a flash in the engine plum, and at least a piece of debris was seen taking care of the flame trench under the ship.
Space X -Ground staff returned to the production site a two -mile production site, to replace a damaged engine, before returning to the test stand back to the test stand for a weekend for a successful engine firing on Monday.
Now, the ship will return to the star base blood site, where the technicians will make the final preparation for the flight 9. These last tasks can load the make -up star link broadband satellite in the plane’s pay load bay and contain touch -ups to the rocket heat shield.
There are two elements of the starchy that Space X Engineer are desperate to demonstrate on Flight 9, in addition to solving problems with only the last two missions. These failures prevented the starchy from testing its satellite delay and an upgraded temperature shield that was designed to improve the temperature rising to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,430 degrees Celsius) during the rental.
This story originally appeared ARS Technica.
