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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] |
SpaceX Starship
Starship is a Fully-reusable orbital launch vehicle, fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX, an American aerospace company. With more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V, it is designed to be the most powerful launch vehicle ever built and the first with total reusability. The Starship launch vehicle is made up of the SpaceX Starship#Super Heavy booster, Super Heavy first-stage booster and the SpaceX Starship#Starship spacecraft, Starship second stage. The second stage functions as a self-contained spacecraft for carrying crew or cargo once in orbit. Both stages are powered by Raptor engines that burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants in a highly efficient, full-flow staged combustion power cycle. Both rocket stages are designed to be reused by landing vertically at the launch pad or at a separate platform. In its fully reusable configuration, Starship has a payload capacity of to low Earth orbit and is designed to be flown mul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vehicle Weight
Vehicle weight is a measurement of wheeled motor vehicles; either an actual measured weight of the vehicle under defined conditions or a gross weight rating for its weight carrying capacity. Curb or kerb weight Curb weight (U.S. English) or kerb weight (British English) is the total mass of a vehicle with standard equipment and all necessary operating consumables such as motor oil, transmission oil, brake fluid, coolant, air conditioning refrigerant, and sometimes a full tank of fuel, while not loaded with either passengers or cargo. The gross vehicle weight is larger and includes the maximum payload of passengers and cargo. This definition may differ from definitions used by governmental regulatory agencies or other organizations. For example, many European Union manufacturers include the weight of a driver and luggage to follow European Directive 95/48/EC. Organizations may also define curb weight with fixed levels of fuel and other variables to equalize the value for the comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ullage
Ullage or headspace is the unfilled space in a container, particularly with a liquid. Etymology The word ''ullage'' comes from the Latin word ''oculus'', used by the Romans to refer to a barrel cork hole. This word was, in turn, taken in medieval French as ''oeil'', from which a verb ''ouiller'' was created, meaning to fill a barrel to full capacity. Around 1300, the word ''ouillage'' was created by the Normans to refer to the amount of liquid needed to fill a barrel to capacity. Alcoholic beverages In winemaking, ''ullage'' came to refer to any amount by which a barrel is unfilled, perhaps because some of the contents have been used. It is also applied to the unfilled air space at the top of a bottle of wine, which in this case is essential to allow for expansion of the contents as the temperature changes. By further extension, in brewing and beer retail, ''ullage'' is the residue of beer left in a barrel that has been emptied. When calculating tax returns and the like, license ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cold Gas Thruster
A cold gas thruster (or a cold gas propulsion system) is a type of rocket engine which uses the expansion of a (typically inert) pressurized gas to generate thrust. As opposed to traditional rocket engines, a cold gas thruster does not house any combustion and therefore has lower thrust and efficiency compared to conventional monopropellant and bipropellant rocket engines. Cold gas thrusters have been referred to as the "simplest manifestation of a rocket engine" because their design consists only of a fuel tank, a regulating valve, a propelling nozzle, and the little required plumbing. They are the cheapest, simplest, and most reliable propulsion systems available for orbital maintenance, maneuvering and attitude control. Cold gas thrusters are predominantly used to provide stabilization for smaller space missions which require contaminant-free operation. Specifically, CubeSat propulsion system development has been predominantly focused on cold gas systems because CubeSats have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spacecraft Attitude Control
Spacecraft attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of a spacecraft (vehicle/satellite) with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity such as the celestial sphere, certain fields, and nearby objects, etc. Controlling vehicle attitude requires sensors to measure vehicle orientation, actuators to apply the torques needed to orient the vehicle to a desired attitude, and algorithms to command the actuators based on (1) sensor measurements of the current attitude and (2) specification of a desired attitude. The integrated field that studies the combination of sensors, actuators and algorithms is called guidance, navigation and control (GNC). Overview A spacecraft's attitude must typically be stabilized and controlled for a variety of reasons. It is often needed so that the spacecraft high-gain antenna may be accurately pointed to Earth for communications, so that onboard experiments may accomplish precise pointing for accurate collectio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Falcon 9
Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX. The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payload to a certain altitude, after which the second stage lifts the payload to its ultimate destination. The rocket evolved through several versions. V1.0 flew from 2010–2013, V1.1 flew from 2013–2016, while V1.2 Full Thrust first launched in 2015, encompassing the Block 5 variant, flying since May 2018. The booster is capable of landing vertically to facilitate reuse. This feat was first achieved on flight 20 in December 2015. Since then, SpaceX has successfully landed boosters over 100 times. Individual boosters have flown as many as 15 flights. Both stages are powered by SpaceX Merlin engines, using cryogenic liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene (RP-1) as propellants. The heaviest payloads flown to geostationary transfer or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grid Fin
Grid fins (or lattice fins) are a type of flight control surface used on rockets and bombs, sometimes in place of more conventional control surfaces, such as planar fins. They were developed in the 1950s by a team led by and used since the 1970s in various Soviet ballistic missile designs such as the SS-12 ''Scaleboard'', SS-20 ''Saber'', SS-21 ''Scarab'', SS-23 ''Spider'', and SS-25 ''Sickle'', as well as the N-1 (the intended rocket for the Soviet moon program). In Russia, they are thus often referred to as ' grid fins. Grid fins have also been used on conventional missiles and bombs such as the Vympel R-77 air-to-air missile; the 3M-54 Klub (SS-N-27 Sizzler) family of cruise missiles; and the American Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) large-yield conventional bomb, and on specialized devices such as the Quick-MEDS delivery system and as part of the launch escape system for the Soyuz spacecraft. In 2014, SpaceX tested grid fins on a first-stage demonstration test v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Full-flow Staged Combustion
The staged combustion cycle (sometimes known as topping cycle, preburner cycle, or closed cycle) is a power cycle of a bipropellant rocket engine. In the staged combustion cycle, propellant flows through multiple combustion chambers, and is thus combusted in stages. The main advantage relative to other rocket engine power cycles is high fuel efficiency, measured through specific impulse, while its main disadvantage is engineering complexity. Typically, propellant flows through two kinds of combustion chambers; the first called preburner and the second called main combustion chamber. In the preburner, a small portion of propellant, usually fuel-rich, is partly combusted, and the increasing volume flow is used to drive the turbopumps that feed the engine with propellant. The gas is then injected into the main combustion chamber and combusted completely with the other propellant to produce thrust. Tradeoffs The main advantage is fuel efficiency due to all of the propellant flo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gimbaled Thrust
Gimbaled thrust is the system of thrust vectoring used in most rockets, including the Space Shuttle, the Saturn V lunar rockets, and the Falcon 9. Operation In a gimbaled thrust system, the engine or just the exhaust nozzle of the rocket can be swiveled on two axes (pitch and yaw ) from side to side. As the nozzle is moved, the direction of the thrust is changed relative to the center of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the balance point) is the unique point where the weight function, weighted relative position (vector), position of the distributed mass sums to zero. Thi ... of the rocket. The diagram illustrates three cases. The middle rocket shows the straight-line flight configuration in which the direction of thrust is along the center line of the rocket and through the center of gravity of the rocket. On the rocket at the left, the nozzle has been deflected to the left and the thrust line is now inclined ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASASpaceFlight
''NASASpaceflight.com'' is a private news website and forum which launched in 2005, covering crewed and uncrewed spaceflight and aerospace engineering news. Its original reporting has been referenced by various news outlets on spaceflight-specific news, such as MSNBC, USA Today and ''The New York Times'' among others. NASASpaceflight also produces videos and live streams of rocket launches online, with a special focus on developments at SpaceX's Starbase facility, for which they were recognized with an award by SpaceNews. NSF is owned and operated by managing editor Chris Bergin and content is produced by a team of spaceflight reporters, journalists, contributors, editors, photographers, and videographers across the United States and other countries. NASASpaceflight and NASASpaceflight.com are not affliated with NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel
A composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) is a vessel consisting of a thin, non-structural liner wrapped with a structural fiber composite, designed to hold a fluid under pressure. The liner provides a barrier between the fluid and the composite, preventing leaks (which can occur through matrix microcracks which do not cause structural failure) and chemical degradation of the structure. In general, a protective shell is applied for protective shielding against impact damage. The most commonly used composites are fiber reinforced polymers (FRP), using carbon and kevlar fibers. The primary advantage of a COPV as compared to a similar sized metallic pressure vessel is lower weight; COPVs, however, carry an increased cost of manufacturing and certification. Overview A composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) is a pressure-containing vessel, typically composed of a metallic liner, a composite overwrap, and one or more bosses. They are used in spaceflight due to their high ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chine (aeronautics)
In aircraft design, a chine is a longitudinal line of sharp change in the cross-section profile of the fuselage or similar body. The term chine originates in boatbuilding, where it applies to a sharp profile change in the hull of a boat.Angled chine, different from soft (rounded) chine In a flying boat hull or floatplane float, the longitudinal line of sharp change in cross-section where the bottom plane meets the sidewall is an example of a chine. On some supersonic aircraft a chine extends sideways for some distance, with a very sharp edge blending in with the main wing leading edge root.NASA-AIAA-98-2725 ''Impact of fuselage cross-section on the stability of a generic fighter'' uses "chined-shaped fuselage cross section, chined forebody, fuselage with ... included chine angle" expressions. NASA CR 189641 and AIAA 2008-6228 use "Chine forebody and Chine fuselage" The rest of this article is concerned with this type of chine. Configuration A chine can in aerodynamic terms act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
