These are the megarockets that promise to open the new era of space exploration towards Mars

hMaking the dream of taking humans to Mars a reality is the new horizon that has been outlined by the space race of this century. To be able to take that step, nations like the United States and China have not only shown themselves eager to once again achieve Moon –to convert it into a kind of mission shuttle to deep space–, but they have stepped on the accelerator in the development of new ships capable of carrying heavy loads that allow the colonization of space.

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In that competition SpaceXthe company that Elon Musk founded in 2002 to advance its ambitions to become the lead for humans to reach the red planet, it remains the most prominent contender. Last week we saw how the most powerful rocket that has been built so far reached an important milestone in its development process that suggests that reaching Martian soil may be possible..

On June 6, in its fourth test launch, it managed to return both stages of the ship – the Super Heavy booster and the capsule – to Earth in a controlled manner, a milestone it had not met in its first three attempts. “Dressing confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team for an exciting fourth Starship flight test!” the company noted on its X account.

For experts in the field such as Juan Francisco Puerta, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Antioquia, although Starship still has tests ahead to become a fully functional and safe rocket for transporting cargo and humans – the fifth test would take place in the next three months – has already managed to break paradigms in the sector regarding traditional ways of working on issues such as the design and manufacturing of ships.

“In approaches like NASA’s, everything had to be perfect before being used. An entire traditional aerospace systems engineering design process was carried out and, if an error was found after three or four years, it had to be done again, it took a lot of time. SpaceX’s perspective is something known as evolutionary systems, which have an initial idea in which things are tested, measured to improve them.”explains Professor Puerta.

In this way, SpaceX passed in just three years from a rocket that completely exploded minutes after its first launch and that in the second attempt failed to separate the two parts that make it up, so the controllers had to activate a safety system. emergency that caused the ship to also explode, to a ship for which the saying ‘third is the charm’ seems to apply. On the third flight it separated its two phases – the capsule and the Super Heavy launcher–, successfully started its six engines and reached the expected altitude and speed for the first time, although it did not land. Something that has marked the celebrations of the fourth attempt.

Daniel Posada, a doctor in aerospace engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, describes it as an engineering feat, considering the dimensions of a ship that aspires to carry more than 100 metric tons of cargo into space, making the Super Heavy launcher reusable for lower the costs of the space feats of the future, as SpaceX already does in the present with ships like the Falcon 9 that take astronauts to the International Space Station.

“Re-entry into the atmosphere is the most difficult part of all, because the size increases the area of ​​the vehicle and there is much more heat that must be dissipated because that entire surface is in friction with the atmosphere,” details the expert. This first phase of Starship is 121.3 meters high (71 of the booster and 50.3 of the ship).

And Posada continues: “For that the ship has special ceramics but there are still certain points that still have to be improved, due to the heat there were flaws in the surface that is responsible for orienting the vehicle aerodynamically. But even so, the design was so robust that with those flaws they managed to land in the desired way.”

However, in that race to Mars, although it is the most advantaged runner, Starship is not alone. A new generation of rockets is under development with private sector support that has proven instrumental in increasing the ambition of space projects. These are some of the ships, including SpaceX’s commitment, that promise to mark this new chapter in the history of humanity in space.

Starship

According to SpaceX, Starship represents a fully reusable transportation system designed to serve the needs of Earth orbit, as well as missions to the Moon and Mars. It is a two-stage vehicle – composed of the Super Heavy rocket (propellant) and the Starship (spacecraft), which runs on subcooled methane and oxygen. An idea that Elon Musk’s company has been working on since 2005: manufacturing the most powerful launch vehicle ever developed.

When functional, what Musk hopes will happen in three years is that it will be capable of transporting satellites, payloads, crew and cargo to various orbits and landing sites on Earth, the Moon or Mars. The Super Heavy launcher has 33 Raptor engineswhile the capsule, which hopes in future phases to be able to carry up to 100 people on interplanetary flights, carries another 6.

At 121.3 meters high, it surpasses by 10.7 meters the emblematic Saturn V rocket (110.6 m) used in the NASA’s Apollo program which took the first men to the Moon and at 23.2 meters to the initial phase of the Space Launch System (SLS), developed by the US space agency for the first phases of the Artemis program, with which they hope to resume lunar missions later of more than half a century.

Precisely for these missions SpaceX has already received several contracts from NASA, among which the HLS lunar landerwhich will be the means of transport that will take astronauts from the orbit of the natural satellite to the lunar surface, with a special version of the Starship.

It is expected that subsequent versions of the Starship will continue to raise the bar. Starship 2 will be 124.4 meters high (72.3 for the booster and 52.1 for the ship) while Starship 3 will reach 150 meters in height (80.2 for the booster and 69.8 for the ship).

New Glenn

With this rocket, named in honor of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, Blue Originthe space company Jeff Bezos It is also betting on reusable rockets. They point out that the first stage is designed for a minimum of 25 flights and that, by operating like a commercial airplane (but with less polluting fuel), it will generate much less waste and costs.

The height of New Glenn is 98 meters high, which also places it among the largest ships that have been built. It is estimated to be capable of transporting nearly 45,000 metric tons of cargo to low-Earth orbit, powered by seven liquid oxygen (LOX)/liquefied natural gas (LNG) staged combustion engines.

As with Starship, the New Glenn first stage booster is the phase of the vehicle that will be reusable and is designed to land on an offshore platform in the Atlantic Ocean. However, this ship has not yet begun its test launches.

In January of this year it was already seen fully assembled on a launch pad in Florida (USA) for ground testing, but its maiden flight has been postponed, first from 2020 to 2021, then to 2022 and, therefore, Now, it is scheduled to finally happen by the end of this year.

Being another of the private companies that serve as contractors for NASA, Blue Origin also plans to use this rocket to launch the lunar landers that they are designing for the Artemis program.

The SLS

For NASA the Space Launch System (SLS)along with the Orion spacecraft, the Gateway platform in lunar orbit and the human landing system (developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin), are the backbone of the agency for deep space exploration and the Artemis lunar program. ANDIt is also the most powerful rocket that NASA has built.

SLS is intended to ship to Orion, astronauts and supplies to the Moon in a single mission. For Artemis I alone, the rocket delivered more than 27 metric tons to the natural satellite and is expected to have even more power and be capable of lifting even heavier payloads into orbit as it evolves.

For this first mission, the ship’s Block 1 configuration was used, which measures 98 meters, is taller than the Statue of Liberty and weighs 5.75 million pounds. However, compared to developments by private companies, one of the main disadvantages of SLS is that it is not reusable and its construction has been highly expensive for NASA. In 2022, NASA inspector General Paul Martin described that the launch of each Artemis mission will cost 4.1 billion dollars (about 15 trillion pesos) per launch, which was described as “unsustainable.”

Efforts in China

But beyond the accelerated progress that is being seen on the American side, another front that is moving in the space race is the Chinese one, which has also decided to give a boost to the private sector. According to Agencia Efe, China opened its space sector to private capital at the end of 2014 and, since then, hundreds of companies have seen the light. However, until now it has specialized in launching satellites and space vehicles within the framework of lower-cost programs.

In the development of new vehicles they recently tested Gravity 1, which with a height of 30 meters, a weight of 405 tons and a thrust of 600 tons, is the most powerful solid fuel launcher in the world. Developed by the private company Orienspace, it carried three Earth observation satellites in January. However, for experts such as engineer Daniel Posada, with the use of this type of fuel in its rockets, which have a greater negative impact on the environment, China continues to lag behind in the development of these technologies.

“The infrastructure and investment they have made in recent years in the aerospace sector has been very high. They are slowly catching up and surpassing powers like Russia. But first they also have to start experimenting with the whole part of reusing vehicles and master other fuels that they have not used before,” says Posada. Meanwhile, the Asian country is also developing the Long March 9 and Long March 10 super-heavy rockets for large space infrastructure and manned lunar missions, respectively.

ALEJANDRA LÓPEZ PLAZAS

SCIENCE EDITING

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