Elon Musk TPS genius design is better than any others…
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In recent days, SpaceX has shocked the world with its astonishing speed. Only in 15 hours, the company has rolled a new Starship to its South Texas launch and test facilities, reassembled the world’s largest rocket, launched Starlink satellites to orbit, and recovered a reused Falcon 9 booster in port.
How incredible!
All aim toward Elon Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars. But obviously, all of that is never enough in real.
SpaceX already has extensive experience launching, landing, and reusing orbital-class rocket boosters thanks to Falcon 9 and Heavy. The Starship upper stage, however, will have to survive orbital-velocity atmospheric reentries some 3 to 5 times faster and exponentially more energetic than Super Heavy boosters. To do so routinely while keeping Starship’s cost and complexity low and reusability high, SpaceX will have to develop an unprecedentedly effective heat shield that is easier to install, maintain, and reuse than anything that has come before it.
So, this is Elon Musk TPS genius design is better than others!
For many years, SpaceX has already developed a working heat shield for their Dragon spacecraft, but Starship is a different beast entirely.
The Dragon capsule returns from space and lands in the water and then goes off to a factory to be refurbished and the heat shield replaced.
On the other hand, Starship needs to be ready to fly again immediately after landing,” adding that there will be “zero refurbishment” planned between one landing and the next takeoff.
However, this is really an extremely difficult problem, enter the Shuttle.
Ceramic Shuttle tiles had a history of glitches.
It took forever to glue on the thermal tiles that shielded the space shuttle from the scorching heat of reentry — nearly two man-years of work for every flight — and the glue dried so fast that technicians had to mix a new batch after every couple of tiles. But they came up with a solution: spit in the glue so it took longer to harden.
The trouble was that spit weakened the adhesive bond between the tiles and the shuttle’s aluminum shell, making the tiles more likely to fall off during the spectacular stresses of space flight. When NASA officials found out about this home remedy, they put an end to it.
Elon Musk TPS genius design is better than any others…
