SpaceX’s Stage Zero is a Genius Design that Elon Musk ever made, unlike others…
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Spaceflight, like all flight, is a trade-off between weight and thrust. The more weight you want to move, the more thrust is required. Aerospace engineers are always trying to reduce weight.
That is what Musk, as Chief Engineer at SpaceX, is trying to do with his stage zero. He doesn’t want to add landing legs to his Superheavy booster. It’s just too much weight. The solution is that when the booster returns to earth it won’t have any landing structure. Instead, it will be caught by the tower. Same for the Starship, unless s ship is designed to land on the moon or Mars.
Musk ever told his audience this is a big deal but also a big challenge.
“it’s really worth emphasizing that the whole launch system, which is basically stage zero, is I’d say, as complex and difficult as either the booster or the ship.”
Indeed, Stage Zero is one of the most Genius Design that Elon Musk ever made.
Find out everything about this in today’s episode of Alpha Tech:
First, let’s go to the tank farm. This is truly a utopian fuel blockhouse of the current world.
Starship’s orbital launch site tank farm is a group of eight massive storage tanks surrounded by thousands of feet of insulated plumbing, industrial pumps, a small army of “cryocoolers,” a blockhouse filled with human-sized valves, and much more. Said tank farm has been under construction for the better part of 2021, beginning with work on its concrete foundation in January.
Nine months later, the orbital tank farm is nearly complete. A power distribution and communications blockhouse has been completed for weeks with virtually all the wiring and cabling needed for the orbital launch mount and tower already in place. Several hundred feet of concrete cable and plumbing conduit have been filled with thousands of feet of wires, cables, and pipes and have been sealed and buried. The tank farm blockhouse – where a dozen or so massive valves control the flow of propellant to and from the orbital launch mount and tower – is complete save for some final plumbing.
SpaceX’s Stage Zero is a Genius Design that Elon Musk ever made, unlike others…
