SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket was successfully launched at 3:45 p.m. EST on February 6 and 4:45 p.m. Beijing time on February 7, marking a new milestone in the history of manned spaceflight. Just yesterday, the sharp drop of Bitcoin, which was called the largest technology bubble by stock market analysts, dragged down the global stock market, and the successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket swept the haze of the technology circle.
Even us Love to play computer games It is also necessary to summarize the news of this rocket for everyone across the border, so that we can probably know how significant it is. This science popularization will be carried out from three aspects of Falcon Heavy Rocket: "background information and parameters, interesting settings on the rocket, and its impact on the human aviation industry", hoping to help you understand the launch and its impact.
Background and process
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002. The partially reusable Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 carrier rockets successfully flew for the first time in 2008 and 2010, and began to deliver supplies to the International Space Station in 2012. However, Falcon 9's now iconic rocket recovery, after many failures, was successfully recovered for the first time on December 22, 2015. However, in 2016, Falcon 9 failed to launch three times. After Musk's "rectification", SpaceX was on the right track.
In April 2016, the first marine rocket recovery was successfully completed, and commercial satellites were launched many times in 2017. Among them, in October last year, Falcon 9 sent 10 Iridium satellites into space in the form of "one arrow and ten stars" (yes, that Iridium satellite almost brought down Motorola that year).
The Falcon heavy rocket program was first announced in 2011, and the original goal was to launch in 2013 or 2014. After four years of delay, the Falcon Heavy Rocket successfully launched its first test. From the announcement of the plan to today's launch, SpaceX has spent seven years for the Falcon heavy rocket.
The Falcon heavy rocket is 70 meters high, 12.2 meters wide, 1420.8 tons in total weight, and 5 million pounds in takeoff thrust, equivalent to the combined thrust of 18 747 aircraft. It is SpaceX's largest carrier rocket at present, and also the most powerful one in service. Above it is only the Saturn 5 carrier rocket in the Apollo program (the rest are competitors who have not yet started mass production). Falcon heavy rocket can send 63.8 tons of load to low Earth orbit, or 18 tons of load to Mars. It can even throw 3.5 tons of load to Pluto orbit (the one that was thrown out of nine planets before).
The Falcon heavy first stage rocket is made of three Falcon 9 "bundled", with a total of 27 Merlin engines (each Falcon 9 has 9 engines), two of which were launched in 2016. In this launch, of the three first stage rockets, only the core stage rocket (the main thruster in the middle) failed to be recovered, and the other two were successfully recovered on land.
On the core stage rocket (the main propeller in the middle), three of the nine engines were supposed to be re ignited, but two failed to start, resulting in the rocket falling into the Atlantic Ocean at a speed of 450 km/h. Even so, SpaceX has completed the recycling of a total of 23 rockets.
The goal of this launch is to reach the Mars orbit. The rocket will stay in the Earth orbit for 6 hours, and then re ignite the engine to fly to the orbit between the Earth and Mars. The journey from Earth to Mars takes an average of 162 days. The last closest distance between the Earth and Mars was 56 million kilometers in 2003 (the distance between the Earth and the Moon was 380000 kilometers, nearly 150 times the difference). When both the Earth and Mars were at aphelion, the distance between them was as high as 225 million kilometers.
Musk predicted that the test load (Tesla midnight cherry red Roadster sports car) will eventually be very close to Mars and drift in orbit for hundreds of millions of years, and it may even fall on Mars (of course, very unlikely). Because the target is not the Martian ground, and even if it enters the Martian atmosphere by mistake, it will also be burned, so there is no risk of microbial contamination of Mars in the process.
SpaceX plans to launch a large Saudi communication satellite (named Arabsat 6A) in the first half of 2018, and launch a test payload for the US Air Force in the first half of 2018 to pass the rocket certification of national security missions. In the future, Falcon Heavy Rocket will launch two more communication satellites for Inmarsat and Viasat.
Small details full of humanity and respect
In this story, there are several interesting points full of human and bi flavor:
The launching site of Falcon Heavy Rocket is the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which is also the launching site of Apollo 11, which brought humans to the moon in 1969.
Musk himself had no great expectations for the launch itself, which was the first flight of the rocket after all. Musk also said many times that the rocket may explode, as long as it does not blow up the launch pad, it is considered a success.
From the picture, we can probably figure out how big the loading chamber of Falcon Heavy Rocket is
Generally, concrete blocks are used for testing loads, while Musk uses Tesla's midnight cherry red Roadster sports car, another company of his own.
This Tesla is the first car in space. If the plan goes well, it will set records for "the first car in Mars orbit" and "the fastest car in motion".
Tesla's monitor says "Don't Panic", which is also a sentence on the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. David Bowie's Space Oddity is playing on the bus.
Tesla's passenger is a space dummy named "Starman". Starman is also a famous song of David Bowie, which was released in 1972 (it is estimated that everyone will think of this song when hearing the melody). In addition, because there is no air in space, the space dummy sitting in the car can't hear the songs played in the car. The space suit worn by the space dummy is just like a fake space suit. SpaceX spent three years designing it.
Tesla also has a laser optical quartz storage device built by the Arch Mission Foundation, which can withstand harsh space conditions. Isaac Asimov is inside The trilogy of "Base" in science fiction (a group of people saw that the Milky Way was about to enter a dark war era, and then concentrated on scientists to establish a "living base" on the new planet). Along with it is a nameplate engraved with the names of 6000 SpaceX employees.
The unmanned ship named "Of Course I Still Love You" (Chinese translation:. Its name and that of another sister ship, "Just Read the Instructions", are derived from Iain M. Banks' Culture series novels.
The Falcon rockets are named after the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars.
With the advent of the space age, the space agencies of all countries should hurry up
Although mankind landed on the moon nearly 50 years ago, after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and the retirement of the space shuttle, the scope of human space missions was limited to 400km low Earth orbit, which is the orbital height of the International Space Station. It even had to manually supplement propellant to maintain its own orbital height.
The biggest feature of SpaceX rocket is its recyclability and low cost. It can reduce the launch cost of rockets of the same level several times, and the launch cycle is shorter, which has posed a huge threat to the space agencies of all countries in the world. The launching cost of Falcon heavy rocket is only 90 million US dollars, only 1/4 of the previous international commercial launch
In private aviation, Boeing and Lockheed Martin co founded the Vulcan rocket of the United Launch Alliance, and Amazon founder Bezos' Blue Source company New Glenn Giant Rocket are its competitors. Even NASA's "new space launch system" rocket is targeted by SpaceX.
In December 2017, President Trump of the United States proposed a plan to return to the moon. NASA predicts that the new moon landing program will cost up to 104 billion dollars. The launch cost of the SLS space shuttle launch system being developed by NASA is as high as $900 million to $1 billion, and it will not be sent to the moon until 2022. In such a comparison, the launching cost of Falcon Heavy Rocket is 90 million yuan, which is like "no money".
Finally, attach the time table for some human probes to fly to Mars:
Mariner 4: the first spaceship to fly by Mars (in 1964): 228 days
Sailor 6: (Flying in 1969): 115 days
Sailor 7: (Flying in 1969): 128 days
Mariner 9: the first spacecraft orbiting Mars (1971): 168 days
Viking 1: the first American spacecraft to land on Mars (1975): 304 days
Viking 2 Orbiter/Lander (1975): 333 days
Mars Global Surveyor (1996): 308 days
Mars Pathfinder (1996): 212 days
Mars Odyssey (2001): 200 days
Mars Express Orbiter (2003): 201 days
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2005): 210 days
Mars Science Laboratory (2011): 254 days
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