After suffering the crash of 40 "Starlink" satellites, Musk recently ushered in a double happiness. First of all, on the afternoon of February 10, local time, he was successfully elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States for "making a breakthrough in the design, engineering, manufacturing and operation of reusable launch vehicles and sustainable transportation and energy systems", a person who was suspected by the Americans themselves to be a Secret Service agent, and had a new identity, and later had to be called Academician Ma.
Fellows of the National Academy of Engineering are not only one of the highest professional honors awarded to engineers, but also a mix of "system", which will be used by Musk in the relationship with NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Park Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Fish and Wildlife Service, the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, the Texas Historical Commission, the Texas State Government Land Office, The Texas Department of Transportation, among others, has reduced its constraints in dealing with a variety of organizations and departments, which are considered to be the "culprits" that have repeatedly delayed the first orbital test flight of the Starship.
The second happy event is that the super heavy B5 and the starship S20 have once again "merged", and the world's tallest rocket has stood on the launch pad for the second time. And the process of "integration" is very sci-fi, first using a large crane, lifting the super heavy B5 on the launch tower, and then using the capture robot arm of the launch tower, the starship S20 is steadily picked up, and installed on the super heavy B5 without any mistakes.
And this is a key part of the future starship recovery. The capture robot arm of the launch tower has many nicknames, "chopsticks", "mecha coolsla", etc., in the future, when the "starship" lands, the weight of the whole body will be "mounted" on this pair of mechanical arms, so abandon the flexibility of these aside, the minimum requirement is to be strong and durable.
Judging from the process of assembling the sub-complete body of the starship in the middle of the night, the capture robot arm lifted the starship S20 with a diameter of 9 meters, 50 meters high and a dry weight of more than 100 tons to a height of 87.8 meters, that is, the height of the super heavy B5 and the launch tower combined, which took nearly an hour, which can be described as "careful to make the ship of ten thousand years". The capture robot arm itself is 36 meters long and 18 meters high, and the performance has been disclosed when the water bladder load test was done last month, with a maximum load of 765 tons, and this time clamping the 100-ton starship S20 is still very easy.
Once upon a time, many people thought that the way to capture a starship with a robotic arm for recovery was whimsical, and even Xiaobian doubted its feasibility, but Musk used this "fusion" process to tell everyone that this is science. Although the robotic arm has not yet carried out a real rocket capture and recovery, his dream has been illuminated into reality.
And Musk did all this for tonight's starship conference, at which Musk even said "if the FAA does not approve, the starship will be launched". The reason why it is so intimidating is because of the main resistance of the previous starship orbital class launches, the strict environmental impact assessment from the FAA and other institutions, SpaceX has not been able to pass, and in desperation, is Musk really playing the idea of "there is no grandfather here, there is a place to stay"?
Now, Musk wants to have the identity, the starship has also "integrated" to stand, the press conference has also opened, but the time for the first orbital class launch has not yet been finalized. The problem he faces, far more than technology and environmental impact assessment so simple, perhaps more artificial suppression, NASA's "pro-son" SLS rocket is not contentious, the first launch has been repeatedly postponed, it is said that it has now been postponed to the beginning of 2023, as a "dry son" starship if it is successfully launched in 2022 and enters orbit, how many people's cake will be moved, the United States and NASA now have the ability and motivation to break the existing interests, pursue dreams and original intentions?