Efficient Space-Launch is All About Planning Infallible Launcher Designs
By: Fading Thyme
Tags: Space Exploration, Elon Musk, Rocket Engine, Space X Falcon 9 Rocket, Innovation

Efficient Space-Launch is All About Planning Infallible Launcher Designs

As a 17-year-old, it astonished me to learn in my class how objects are launched into space. How just using the Newtonian laws of gravity and motion- you can accelerate a thing so that it makes its way through the atmosphere to reach a point where the gravity of the planet takes over and makes it orbit around!

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Humankind started space exploration during the Cold War in 1957- the Sputnik V was the 1st artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union. Sadly, the USSR did not do it primarily for exploration but rather for the brawl USSR, and the United States were into; this launch ended up intensifying the arms race and raised Cold War tensions.

Now, however, we have a list of Space Launch Companies like SpaceX, NASA, Boeing, Blue Origins and Ad Astra to name some, that are taking the Space Race to a completely different level.

In May 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to send NASA astronauts (Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken) to the International Space Station, the first crew to launch from U.S. soil in 9 years.

The company hit the 100-launch milestone for its Falcon-9 cargo rockets, which added nearly 1,000 satellites to its Starlink constellation.

Falcon-9:

The Falcon 9 rocket is currently the main workhorse for SpaceX. It accounts for 123 of the company’s 131 missions (that’s 93.89%), and has a 98.37% success rate, having only 2 failures ever.

SpaceX Launcher models upgrade to support a larger payload (a load of what it necessarily has to carry). In 2018, a Tesla Roadster was used as a dummy payload (which I felt was incredibly cool) for the test launch of the Falcon Heavy model.

Falcon launch vehicles have significantly evolved. It started with a single-engine Falcon 1; now, they use nine engines and the latest one being the Full Thrust model (upgraded from Falcon9 v1.1). They are what we call the two-stage to orbit (TSTO) launcher- these are better than the hypothetical single stage to orbit (SSTO) and the three-stage to orbit launchers because they neither must carry heavier dry mass like the SSTO nor is it as complex as the three-stage launchers and requires lesser number of separations.

Both the stages in TSTO are powered by the Merlin engines and use cyanogenic liquid oxygen and RP-1 as propellants. Igniter they use is a pyrophoric mixture of TEA-TEB (triethylaluminium and triethyl borane). Igniter powers the propellent (filled inside tanks) for the launch.

Test firing of the Merlin 1D at SpaceX’s McGregor test stand

Their designs are progressive because they keep checking them for errors. Say, for example, an upgrade from Falcon9 v 1.0 to Falcon 9 v1.1 — what they did was- the 1st stage the nine engines which are arranged in 3 rows in groups of 3 in the version 1.0 were upgraded to an ‘Octaweb’ arrangement in the version 1.1, where eight other engines circled a single-engine at the centre- they did this for more efficient manufacturing and reducing the length and the width of the launcher.

Many cores use four extensible landing legs at the base of the Octaweb and grid fins that control the core’s descent after separation. The grid fins deploy after the separation of the core, whereas the extensible legs deploy moments before landing.

Collets and a pneumatic pusher system separate the 1st and the 2nd stages; there were 12 separation points in the original model, later reduced to just 3 in the F9v1.1 model. The 2nd stage is pretty much like the 1st stage, just shorter in length, uses the same manufacturing materials as the 1st stage — to reduce its manufacturing cost. The head or forwardmost section of the secondary stage is prone to aerodynamic heating- and so the F9 uses a payload fairing to protect the payload within.

What more? SpaceX aims to send their 1st crewed flight to Mars by 2026, and yes, another sizzling launch vehicle is under development for this- They are calling it the Starship, which is a TSTO too, but its second stage will be a long duration cargo, a passenger-carrying spacecraft, and lander. Plus, this system is fully re-usable.