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IFT-1
On April 20, 2023, SpaceX performed the first integrated near-orbital flight of its Starship rocket. The prototype vehicle was destroyed less than four minutes after lifting off from the SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. The vehicle became the most powerful rocket ever flown, breaking the half-century-old record held by the Soviet Union's N1 rocket. The launch was part of SpaceX's Starship development program, which follows an iterative and incremental approach involving frequent, and often destructive, test flights of prototype vehicles. Before the launch, SpaceX officials said they would measure the mission's success "by how much we can learn" and that various planned mission events "are not required for a successful test". The flight was generally regarded as having furthered Starship's development, and a variety of public officials congratulated SpaceX, including NASA administrator Bill Nelson and European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher. It was p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SpaceX Starship (spacecraft)
Starship is a spacecraft and second stage under development by American aerospace company SpaceX. Stacked atop its booster, Super Heavy, it composes the identically named Starship super heavy-lift space vehicle. The spacecraft is designed to transport both crew and cargo to a variety of destinations, including Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and potentially beyond. It is intended to enable long duration interplanetary flights for a crew of up to 100 people. It will also be capable of point-to-point transport on Earth, enabling travel to anywhere in the world in less than an hour. Furthermore, the spacecraft will be used to refuel other Starship vehicles to allow them to reach higher orbits to and other space destinations. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, estimated in a tweet that 8 launches would be needed to completely refuel a Starship in low Earth orbit, extrapolating this from Starship's payload to orbit and how much fuel a fully fueled Starship contains. To land on bodies with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SpaceX Starship (spacecraft)
Starship is a spacecraft and second stage under development by American aerospace company SpaceX. Stacked atop its booster, Super Heavy, it composes the identically named Starship super heavy-lift space vehicle. The spacecraft is designed to transport both crew and cargo to a variety of destinations, including Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and potentially beyond. It is intended to enable long duration interplanetary flights for a crew of up to 100 people. It will also be capable of point-to-point transport on Earth, enabling travel to anywhere in the world in less than an hour. Furthermore, the spacecraft will be used to refuel other Starship vehicles to allow them to reach higher orbits to and other space destinations. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, estimated in a tweet that 8 launches would be needed to completely refuel a Starship in low Earth orbit, extrapolating this from Starship's payload to orbit and how much fuel a fully fueled Starship contains. To land on bodies with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SpaceX Starship Integrated Flight Test 2
SpaceX Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 (IFT-2) was the second integrated flight test of SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. SpaceX performed the flight test on November 18, 2023. The mission's primary objectives were for the vehicle to Multistage_rocket#Hot-staging, hot stage—a new addition to Starship's flight profile—followed by the second stage attaining a transatmospheric orbit, near-orbital trajectory with a controlled atmospheric reentry, reentry over the Pacific Ocean, while the booster does a boostback burn with a propulsive splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The vehicle successfully lifted off under the power of all 33 SpaceX_Raptor, Raptor engines on the SpaceX Super Heavy, Super Heavy Booster and made it through separation event, stage separation. The booster was planned to land on the Gulf of Mexico, but instead exploded during its boostback burn. The Starship second stage continued to accelerate for over 8 minutes, reaching an altitude of . Towards the end of the se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SpaceX Super Heavy
Super Heavy is the first stage of the SpaceX Starship super heavy-lift launch vehicle, which it composes in combination with the Starship second-stage. As of 2023, Super Heavy prototypes are being flight tested. In April 2023, Super Heavy flew for the first time on the first orbital launch attempt of the Starship rocket. Manufacturing According to Eric Berger of ''Ars Technica'', the manufacturing process starts with rolls of steel, which are unrolled, cut, and welded along the cut edge to create a cylinder of 9 m (30 ft) in diameter, 1.82 m (6 ft) in height, and 4 mm (0.16 in) thick, and around 1,600 kg (4,000 lb) in mass. These cylinders, are stacked and welded along their edges to form the outer layer of the rocket. Inside, the methane and oxygen tanks are separated by robot-made domes. Before final assembly, grid fins are added to the interstage, and the chines are added after stacking of the propellant tanks. Design The first-stage Super Heavy booster is tall, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flight Test
Flight testing is a branch of aeronautical engineering that develops specialist equipment required for testing aircraft behaviour and systems. Instrumentation systems are developed using proprietary transducers and data acquisition systems. Data is sampled during the flight of an aircraft, or Atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric testing of launch vehicles and Reusable launch vehicle, reusable spacecraft. This data is validated for accuracy and analyzed before being passed to specialist engineering groups for further analysis to Verification and validation, validate the design of the vehicle. The flight test phase accomplishes two major tasks: 1) finding and fixing any Aeronautics, design problems and then 2) verification and validation, verifying and documenting the vehicle capabilities for government certification or customer acceptance. The flight test phase can range from the test of a single new system for an existing vehicle to the complete development and certification of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Aviation Administration
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic management, certification of personnel and aircraft, setting standards for airports, and protection of U.S. assets during the launch or re-entry of commercial space vehicles. Powers over neighboring international waters were delegated to the FAA by authority of the International Civil Aviation Organization. Created in , the FAA replaced the former Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and later became an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation. Major functions The FAA's roles include: *Regulating U.S. commercial space transportation *Regulating air navigation facilities' geometric and flight inspection standards *Encouraging and developing civil aeronautics, including new aviation technology *Issuing, suspending, or revoking ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autonomous Flight Termination System
In the field of rocketry, range safety may be assured by a system which is intended to protect people and assets on both the rocket range and downrange in cases when a launch vehicle might endanger them. For a rocket deemed to be ''off course'', range safety may be implemented by something as simple as commanding the rocket to shut down the propulsion system or by something as sophisticated as an independent ''Flight Termination System'' (FTS), which has redundant transceivers in the launch vehicle that can receive a command to self-destruct then set off charges in the launch vehicle to combust the rocket propellants at altitude. Not all national space programs use flight termination systems on launch vehicles. Range safety officers or RSOs are also present in the hobby of model rocketry and then are usually responsible for ensuring a rocket is built correctly, using a safe engine/recovery device, and launched correctly. Flight termination Ground controlled termination Some la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Q
The max q or maximum dynamic pressure condition is the point when an aerospace vehicle's atmospheric flight reaches the maximum difference between the fluid dynamics total pressure and the ambient static pressure. For an airplane, this occurs at the maximum speed at minimum altitude corner of the flight envelope. For a space vehicle launch, this occurs at the crossover point between dynamic pressure increasing with speed and static pressure decreasing with increasing altitude. This is an important design factor of aerospace vehicles, since the aerodynamic structural load on the vehicle is proportional to dynamic pressure. Dynamic pressure Dynamic pressure q, is defined in incompressible fluid dynamics as q = \tfrac\, \rho\, v^, where ''ρ'' is the local air density, and ''v'' is the vehicle's velocity; the dynamic pressure can be thought of as the kinetic energy density of the air with respect to the vehicle, and for incompressible flow equals the difference between total pressure ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boca Chica State Park
Boca Chica is an area on the eastern portion of a subdelta peninsula of Cameron County, at the far south of the US State of Texas along the Gulf Coast. It is bordered by the Brownsville Ship Channel to the north, the Rio Grande and Mexico to the south, and the Gulf of Mexico to the east. The area extends about east of the city of Brownsville. The peninsula is served by Texas State Highway 4—also known as the Boca Chica Highway, or Boca Chica Boulevard within Brownsville city limits—which runs east-west, terminating at the Gulf and Boca Chica Beach. The Boca Chica area has historically consisted of Mexican land grants, Mexican and American ranches, a battlefield of the American Civil War (Battle of Palmito Ranch), a 1920s beach resort, a state park (Boca Chica State Park, opened 1994), a small village (Boca Chica Village, ''circa'' 1960–2020), and, after the mid-2010s, an evolving private space launch facility (Boca Chica Spaceport), which includes a large SpaceX develop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gizmodo
''Gizmodo'' ( ) is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the subsite ''io9'', which focuses on science fiction and futurism. ''Gizmodo'' is now part of G/O Media, owned by private equity firm Great Hill Partners. History The blog, launched in 2002, was originally edited by Peter Rojas, who was later recruited by Weblogs, Inc. to launch their similar technology blog, ''Engadget''. By mid-2004, ''Gizmodo'' and ''Gawker'' together were bringing in revenue of approximately $6,500 per month. Gizmodo then launched in other locations: *In 2005, VNU and Gawker Media formed an alliance to republish ''Gizmodo'' across Europe, with VNU translating the content into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, and adding local European-interest material. *In 2006, ''Gizmodo Japan'' was launched by Mediagene, with add ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gulf Of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southwest and south by the Mexico, Mexican States of Mexico, states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo; and on the southeast by Cuba. The Southern United States, Southern U.S. states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, which border the Gulf on the north, are often referred to as the "Third Coast" of the United States (in addition to its Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, Pacific coasts). The Gulf of Mexico took shape approximately 300 million years ago as a result of plate tectonics.Huerta, A.D., and D.L. Harry (2012) ''Wilson cycles, tectonic inheritance, and rifting of the North American Gulf of Mexico continental margin.'' Geosphere. 8(1):GES00725.1, first p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state geographically located within the tropics. Hawaii comprises nearly the entire Hawaiian archipelago, 137 volcanic islands spanning that are physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. The state's ocean coastline is consequently the fourth-longest in the U.S., at about . The eight main islands, from northwest to southeast, are Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lānai, Kahoolawe, Maui, and Hawaii—the last of these, after which the state is named, is often called the "Big Island" or "Hawaii Island" to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago. The uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands make up most of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the United States' largest protected ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
