Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, shared the process of his company building the Big Falcon Rocket rocket, used to carry people to the Moon and Mars.
Simulation of the Big Falcon Rocket launching into space after separating from the booster. (Photo: SpaceX).
Musk announced that SpaceX will fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the Moon on the company’s Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) rocket on September 17, according to Business Insider. During the event, Musk also revealed a new perspective drawing of the launch system along with a few photos of the operation inside SpaceX’s spacecraft construction site in the port of Los Angeles, USA.
These are the first details of SpaceX’s rocket-making process since April, when Musk posted a photo revealing SpaceX is building a spacecraft, using a cylindrical tool more than 9 meters wide, 12 meters long. meters. ” Main Body Building Tool for SpaceX’s BFR Interplanetary Spacecraft,” Musk wrote on Instagram.
The tool SpaceX uses to build the BFR rocket. (Photo: SpaceX).
Aerospace industry experts say the newly released photos reveal new information about how SpaceX built the BFR rocket and how fast the project is progressing. “It’s quite unusual for private companies and even government agencies to develop rockets to reveal so much about the hardware they’re building. But what Musk wants to do is help the community catch up with him. When he’s excited about some hardware, Musk wants to be as open and transparent as possible,” said Marco Cáeres, senior aerospace analyst at Teal Corporation.
Shape of BFR rocket. Video: SpaceX.
The BFR is designed as a 39-storey building-high launch system, consisting of two parts: a nearly 55-meter-tall spacecraft and a 70-meter-tall booster used to carry the spacecraft into orbit. According to Musk, the spacecraft is the hardest part of the system to build, so SpaceX makes its prototype first.
Musk’s intention is to launch the spacecraft into orbit and refuel the craft as it orbits the Earth. Next, the spacecraft can fire up its engines, fly into space, land on Mars, then take off from Mars and fly back to Earth. Because it is designed to be 100% reusable, the system can perform the above flight route many times. In 2016, Musk said that SpaceX was building the system from high-grade carbon fiber that was stronger than steel but only one-fifth as light.
One of the new photos shared by Musk on September 17 shows a worker inside a round tube with spokes and many burrs. This is the inside of the cylindrical tool that Musk revealed earlier this year, called the center axis. The robot wraps strips of carbon fiber around its centerline to form the spaceship’s more than nine-meter-wide hollow. The carbon fiber is dipped through a glue-like epoxy resin, then heated to harden the compound.
The inside of the SpaceX hub is used to make the carbon fiber parts of the BFR rocket. Photo: SpaceX.
In the image below is the image of the hollow body after separating from the center axis. The circular dome on the left appears to be part of a propellant tank also made of a carbon fiber compound. The carbon fiber strips are in the form of shuttlecocks. But Steve Nutt, professor of chemistry, aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Southern California, thinks SpaceX engineers are wrapping the hub in unwoven yarn.
The hollow body of the carbon fiber compound of the BFR rocket after completion. Photo: SpaceX.
According to Nutt, the unwoven layers provide “the ultimate in stiffness and strength” because they don’t twist or wrinkle easily (which can weaken the texture). They also maximize the amount of ultra-strong carbon fiber compared to epoxy resins. “What they’re doing is pretty clever,” says Nutt.
Carbon fiber will shrink when heated and harden, so Nutt speculates SpaceX may be using very large plastic bags and sucking up all the air to squeeze the layers of fibers. But he’s not sure how SpaceX heats up each part. “Many structures are too large to apply the method, so they can use ‘heat blankets,'” Nutt said.
Cáeres, who has studied the aerospace industry for decades, said the new photos highlight the grand scale of the project. “This is possibly the biggest challenge I’ve seen since the Saturn V rocket days in terms of engineering. I’ve never seen anything this big,” said Cáeres. Not even the New Glenn, a heavy-duty reusable booster built by billionaire Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin, can’t match it.
Yusaku Maezawa stands inside a hollow body made of carbon fiber composite. Photo: SpaceX.
Previously, Cáeres estimated the BFR development program would cost about billion, and Musk made a similar estimate when announcing Maezawa’s role in the Moon mission. If the BFR rocket launch to the Moon in 2023 is successful, the results will confirm the capabilities of SpaceX. ” This project is not like a fever stunt. It is like a test launch,” concludes Cáeres.
Currently, NASA is building a giant, single-use rocket Space Launch System, which can cost more than 20 billion dollars to develop and cost about 1 billion dollars per launch. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s BFR rocket only costs the company tens of millions of dollars to refuel and launch.
“People can’t say, ‘Musk is just a joke. He’s accomplished a lot in such a short time. When I went to trade shows 10 years ago, I asked Boeing and other companies about SpaceX, they roll their eyes and say, ‘That company won’t last long’. Now SpaceX is a big player in the industry,” said Cáeres.