Starship, a space ship capable of interplanetary space travel, is in full swing at the southern tip of Texas.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, a private space company, released a photo of the space rocket on his Twitter account on the 12th, saying, "We just finished assembling a 'Starship' test flight rocket at the Texas launch site."
The Starship, with the Starship attached to it, reflected sunlight as the front of its body was covered with foil-like stainless steel. The shape is very similar to the spaceships in the cartoon, which has aroused strong curiosity around the world.
SpaceX's spaceship Starship, currently assembled in southern Tessas state, is covered with stainless steel like foil, reflecting sunlight. cNASA
Spacecraft 'Starship' early February test
According to NASA on Wednesday, the production of Starship is currently in the final stages. SpaceX is in a hurry to prepare to conduct an experiment for "Starship"'s space travel through state-of-the-art facilities in nearby Bokachikawa McGregor.
Officials believe the "Starship" test will take place in early February as Musk wishes, unless something unexpected happens.
The Starship is equipped with a Raptor engine that is three times more powerful than the Merlin engine installed on the reusable rocket "Palcon 9." The company is carefully conducting an experiment with the biggest emphasis on operating the reactor engine at SpaceX.
The world's growing interest in Starship is due to the availability of space travel that mankind has dreamed of through the spacecraft. A spaceship is a device that can float around the universe as in SF films, a concept claimed by German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the 17th century.
He claimed that after building a spaceship with a big mirror, he would be able to travel through space in solar and solar winds, just as he would travel through the sea on a boat.
It was an inference that was theoretically possible under the circumstances at the time but practically impossible to realize. This reasoning became a reality in the 2000s.
In 2004, Japan successfully launched two small solar navigation systems. In 2005, a private space exploration group, Planetary Society, Cosmos Studio, and the Russian Academy of Sciences worked together to launch the "Cosmos 1," which adopted the solar navigation system, near the Arctic Ocean. However, the massive spacecraft project had to endure failure when the Volna Rocket, which was on the Cosmos 1, broke down.
We can travel in orbit around the Earth on a spaceship.
Later, in February 2006, Japan launched a 15-meter-tall solar-going device through an M-V rocket, but the navigational device did not open, forcing it to be satisfied with partial success. It will launch IKAROS on May 21, 2010 with the aim of exploring the other side of the sun. The main source of power for the spacecraft is solar panels.
Inside the sailboat, there was a huge diamond-shaped sun sail, which was only about 20 meters long diagonal and only 0.0075 millimeters thick, allowing the sun's radiant pressure to be used as propulsion power. The surface has built-in LCDs, allowing the probe to adjust its position through angle control.
The SpaceX 'Starship' project is aimed at human space travel, unlike previous spacecraft projects. It symbolizes the advent of the era of private space travel.
Musk's envisioned use of the Starship is a long-distance space trip beyond the moon. Just as humans can fly abroad, they are using high-tech technologies that they have developed to travel to the moon and Mars.
Currently, the private space travel industry is in a three-way race between SpaceX and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic, led by Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson. Among them, Blue Origin has achieved enough results to match SpaceX. In May 2015, the self-developed space ferry "New Shepherd" completed a test flight of a professional pilot in 2017, and plans to sell space travel tickets to the public starting this year.
Last year, Blue Origin announced that it would spend 300,000 U.S. dollars per person on space travel. Bezos is reportedly seeking ways to permanently settle on the moon in partnership with NASA.
Virgin Galactic plans to sell semi-orbit space travel packages at a cost of about $250,000 per person. Six passengers, along with two crew members, ride a spaceship to the quasi-orbital point and experience a weightless state for about five minutes, and come down to the ground after touring the round figure of the earth shining in dark space.
Already, more than 700 people, including famous Hollywood movie star Brad Pitt, have reportedly expressed their intention to take part in the trip. Branson also said he would become the No. 1 passenger for space travel.
The first time humans left Earth to explore space was in 1968 when American astronauts landed on the moon aboard Apollo. At that time, people expected the era of space travel to come soon.
But with the attention of space science shifting elsewhere, mankind's space travel plans had to wait more time. And 50 years later, the era of private space travel is beginning.
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