SpaceX Starship will need a lot of fuel to be able to get to Mars and storing enough of it may be a big challenge. Elon musk's plans to tackle this by setting up starships that store fuel in orbit. However, the process of getting enough fuel up to the station's is quite complicated.
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| Starship Refueling Concept image credit: artists impression |
What if Elon Musk decides to switch from rocket propellant to solar sails for the Starship to make it go insanely faster?
Read more as we explore how solar sails can Propel the Starship to Mars.
Elon musk ever a Dreamer is still actively pursuing his goal of moving people and Mass from the Earth to Mars. he is doing this to provide a survival option for the human race in case of a catastrophe.
According to his calculations he can move 1 million people to Mars by 2050 for a viable self-sustaining Community. The challenges are enormous, There is the cost to consider as space exploration comes at an exorbitant cost the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA for example spends up to 2 billion dollars on a single Mission and takes years to prepare.
for Elon musk's Mass migration to Mars plan to work he's scheming of ways to bring down the cost by a large order of magnitude. He is targeting making it possible to fund your location to Mars by selling your family house For example, musk intends to achieve this, the use of reusable Rockets.
NASA has traditionally been discarding Rockets for each mission partly responsible for the high bill It runs up. The Starship However, is fully reusable at both, the upper and lower stages. Eliminating the need to build a new spaceship each time a fresh batch of earthlings take off to Mars.
They would be capable of more than a thousand flights each. just like airplanes costs The crucial is but only one aspect of going to Mars or any other planet.
The technical challenge of actually building a vehicle that can reach Mars is very complex. Take for instance, the fuel needed to power the starship to Mars. the shortest distance between the two planets is 33.9 million miles. but that happens, occasionally.
for context here is how long it has taken spaceships to get to Mars in the past
The Mariner 4 the very first spacecraft to do so, took 228 days in 1965. but did a flyby, the Mariner 6 did a lot better with 155 days for another flyby 4 years later.
The next Mariner spent 128 days and Root the same year. the shortest on record. The first American spacecraft, the Viking one cruised, for 304 days to reach Mars. while the Viking 2 took a whopping 333 days a few days short of a whole year.
More recently the Mars Odyssey, took a total of 200 days to reach Mars in 2001. While the Mars reconnaissance Orbiter spent two hundred and ten days. Mars science laboratory arrived at 254 days in 2011. but the latest arriver on Mars, the perseverance persevered for seven months, and Root covering a total of 293 million miles, and it Departed at an insane 24,600 miles per hour.
Bear in mind, that cargo bearing Starships are making the trips ahead of humans. so Mars can be more inhabitable when they turn up. that's a lot of weight to blast to and move through space. In fact, each Starship can lift up to 100 Mega Newton's to Low Earth Orbit.
Starship uses a different kind of fuel named Methylox that is methane + Oxygen and it is going to need lots of it. apart from the huge amount of fuel required, fueling up the Starship is going to be a logistic challenge.
Complicating things is that each Starship needs tremendous amounts of fuel to escape the Earth's gravitational pull and its fuel will be far spent by the time it reaches the Earth's orbit. In fact, musk said that you have to refuel after the Escape else, You won't have enough fuel to go anywhere in space. Much less to Mars the process of refueling requires juggling up to 5 other Starships acting as fuel tankers, that are waiting in space.
Don't forget that each of these Starship fuel tankers need to escape gravity on their own, lots of effort required there.
What, if must decides to change things up and use another method of propulsion for Starship.
There is a method of moving a spacecraft through space that does not involve burning a propellant or going nuclear. It is the use of solar sails and it could work for the Starship.
Elon musk spacecraft will basically use the energy from the Sun to move away from the Sun.
It works like this, have you ever noticed boats moving on water when the wind pushes the sales attached to the boats?
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| Wind Sailor Boat image credit: artists impression |
It is the same principle here, attached sales big enough to the Starship and photons from the sun will hit the sails driving the Starship Forward. photons, do not possess Mass. but their high-speed gives the momentum which can move the objects they Strike.
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| Solar Sails Concept image credit: artists impression |
This means theoretically, if the sales and the Starship have enough surface area they will move the Starship forward.
How big would the sails have to be to work for the Starship?
We're talking of sizes in the magnitude of football pitches. Everything is large where the Starship is concerned but as long as it is large enough, the Starship will move towards Mars.
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| Solar Sails image credit: artists impression |
Solar Sails are particularly great as they are more environmentally friendly for anybody, that is concerned With preserving the environment out there in space.
With solar sails it is easy to steer the Starship as it is similar to how boats are steered with sales, simply alter the positioning or angles of the sales and the Starship will go in the direction you want. Steering spacecraft and root is a necessity to ensure It will arrive at their intended destinations and to ensure they remain in communication with the command center on Earth.
As the Starship moves further away from the Sun less photons will strike the sales, meaning less Speed but that can be remedied by using laser beams. they produce photons too and all SpaceX has to do, is to direct the lasers at the sails of the Starship to keep it moving.
The laser can be sent from basically anywhere in the universe. You could do it from here on Earth or the moon. So with solar sails, the Starship will never run out of fuel.
In terms of speed the Starship outfitted with solar sails will move very fast. solar sails Have a maximum speed that is 10% of the speed of light, which is equivalent to 18,600 per second or 67,100,000 miles per hour.
The star shift might not be able to achieve that insane speed due to its weight. but it will certainly move very fast.
It is noteworthy that Bill Nye, the popular American Science, dude, specifically mentioned Mars went touting the advantages of solar sails. He said the technology could help deliver cargo to Mars One day.
Interestingly, The predecessor of the Starship has been involved in projects involving solar sails.
The planetary Society started by the space Superstar Carl Sagan and now headed by Bill Nye his former student, spearheaded the effort to put the light sail to the first spacecraft in orbit to be propelled solely by solar sails.
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket was tapped to launch another spacecraft the Prox one that carried the light sail too. after separating the prox one, then launched the light sail 2 into orbit.
Elon musk describe the launch as the most complicated ever for his company up to that point. The light sail 2 was basically a demonstration spacecraft. It is the size of a loaf of bread and weighs about 11 pounds. When completely unfurled the light sail 2 measure 344 square feet in surface area.
The sails are made of tough tear resistant material named, mylar and are coated with highly reflective materials. They are thinner than a strand of hair on your head. The light sail 2 has components that lets it detect where the sun's rays are the strongest and takes advantage of them.
It is now flying in a circular orbit of 447 miles around the Earth. the project cost 7 million dollars and was supported mostly by crowdsourcing on Kickstarter.
Bill Nye dreams of solar sails going to other planets and stars. if musk was paying any attention during the launch he could be already thinking of using it on his Starship.It could solve the problem of the Starship running out of fuel on one of the longest trips ever undertaken by humans.
NASA too is testing out a new type of solar sailing System in conjunction with Nano avionics in a mission called the advanced composite solar sail system. It would Supply in low earth orbit, but could be upgraded to handle bigger missions If it goes well.
The little spacecraft will be attached to an 800 square feet Solar sail that will take about 30 minutes to unfurl.
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