SpaceX's giant Starship rocket is poised to head for space from South Texas.

SpaceX의 거대한 스타쉽 로켓이 텍사스 남부에서 우주로 향할 준비가 되어 있습니다.

BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—Early Saturday morning, SpaceX will load more than 10 million pounds of super-cold methane and liquid oxygen into the propellant tanks inside the company's second flight-ready Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket.

텍사스주 보카치카 해변 - 토요일 이른 아침, SpaceX는 회사의 두 번째 비행 준비가 완료된 Super Heavy 부스터와 Starship 로켓 내부의 추진제 탱크에 천만 파운드 이상의 초저온 메탄과 액체 산소를 적재할 예정입니다.

Then, if all goes according to plan, 33 Raptor engines will light at 7 am CST (13:00 UTC) to propel this gigantic rocket into the sky over Boca Chica Beach, a remote stretch of South Texas shoreline a couple of miles north of the US-Mexico border. SpaceX will live stream the event on X.

Space fans got what they hope will be their last look at this particular rocket Friday night, hours before law enforcement closed off public access to the launch site. One of the neat things about SpaceX's privately-owned South Texas launch site, named Starbase, is the public can approach within a few hundred feet of the rocket. The surrounding mud flats, dunes, and beach are all public land.

At government launch sites, such as Cape Canaveral, Florida, public access is generally restricted to guided tours. Even then, the closest most people can get to an active launch pad is about a mile, and much farther than that on launch days.

플로리다주 케이프커내버럴과 같은 정부 출시 장소에서는 일반적으로 일반인의 접근이 가이드 투어로 제한됩니다. 그럼에도 불구하고 대부분의 사람들이 활성화된 발사대에 가장 가까운 곳은 약 1마일이며, 발사일보다 훨씬 더 깁니다.

SpaceX delayed the Starship test flight from Friday to replace actuators on grid fins positioned near the top of the rocket's first stage. Ground teams removed the upper stage from the rocket Thursday to complete the repairs, then reinstalled the upper stage Friday morning to continue with launch preparations.

SpaceX는 로켓의 첫 번째 단계 상단 근처에 위치한 그리드 핀의 액추에이터를 교체하기 위해 금요일부터 Starship 테스트 비행을 연기했습니다. 지상 팀은 수리를 완료하기 위해 목요일 로켓의 상부 스테이지를 제거한 후 금요일 아침 상부 스테이지를 다시 설치하여 발사 준비를 계속했습니다.

The test flight on tap Saturday, if fully successful, will put SpaceX on a path toward additional demonstrations, and perhaps the first operational Starship flights to carry Starlink Internet satellites into orbit. Eventually, SpaceX wants Starship to be the next-generation vehicle to replace and expand the capacity offered by the company's existing Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft.

On Saturday, SpaceX's launch team will begin loading propellants into the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage a little more than 90 minutes before liftoff time. Thermal conditioning of the rocket's Raptor engines will start around 20 minutes prior to launch. In the final 10 seconds of the countdown, several hundred thousand gallons of water will flow through a deluge system to dampen the energy from the nearly simultaneous ignition of 33 Raptor engines at the bottom of the rocket.

If you're a space enthusiast, that's when the real fun begins. Here are five things to watch for on SpaceX's second full-scale Starship test flight.

당신이 우주 매니아라면, 그때부터 진정한 재미가 시작됩니다. SpaceX의 두 번째 본격적인 스타쉽 테스트 비행에서 주목해야 할 5가지 사항은 다음과 같습니다.

1. How will the launch pad hold up?

When the first Starship rocket launched April 20, it made a big mess. The blast from the Super Heavy booster's Raptor engines blew a hole in the concrete beneath the pedestal the rocket sits before launch. Massive chunks of concrete were strewn across hundreds of acres around the launch pad, denting tanks and carving craters in the surrounding mud flats. Clouds of dust and sand fell on communities several miles away.

1. 발사대는 어떻게 버틸까? 4월 20일 첫 번째 스타쉽 로켓이 발사되었을 때 큰 혼란을 겪었다. 슈퍼 헤비 부스터의 랩터 엔진의 폭발로 인해 발사 전 로켓이 놓여 있던 받침대 아래 콘크리트에 구멍이 생겼습니다. 발사대 주변 수백 에이커에 걸쳐 거대한 콘크리트 덩어리가 흩어져 있었고, 탱크가 찌그러지고 주변 갯벌에 분화구가 생겼습니다. 먼지와 모래 구름이 몇 마일 떨어진 지역 사회에 떨어졌습니다.

This is something SpaceX doesn't want to repeat with the second test flight, so engineers installed a water deluge system at the pad to protect it from similar damage again. In the final seconds of the countdown, the deluge system will release up to 358,000 gallons of fresh water through channels built into a steel plate installed underneath the pad's circular launch mount. The fountain-like flow of water is supposed to absorb the heat and acoustic energy from the Super Heavy engines.

Other launch pads, including SpaceX's own launch facilities for the Falcon 9 rocket, use similar water deluge systems.

Falcon 9 로켓을 위한 SpaceX의 자체 발사 시설을 포함한 다른 발사대는 유사한 홍수 시스템을 사용합니다.

SpaceX tested the water deluge system several times since April, including on a pair of hold-down engine tests with the Super Heavy booster in August. The launch pad held up fine during those hot-fire tests, and we'll soon know if the deluge system does the job during a real launch.

2. Will the Raptor engines do better this time?

At least five of the 33 Raptor engines failed on the Super Heavy booster when it flew for the first time in April. SpaceX will try to improve on that with the second test flight of the Super Heavy-Starship rocket.

2. 이번에는 랩터 엔진이 더 좋아질까요? 지난 4월 초중비 부스터가 처음 비행했을 때 랩터 엔진 33개 중 최소 5개가 고장났습니다. SpaceX는 Super Heavy-Starship 로켓의 두 번째 시험 비행을 통해 이를 개선하려고 노력할 것입니다.

These engines each generate a half-million pounds of thrust, for a total of nearly 17 million pounds of thrust while the Super Heavy booster powers the rocket for the first two-and-a-half minutes of the flight. This is more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V rocket used for the Apollo Moon missions. SpaceX can afford to lose a handful of engines without any catastrophic effects on the test flight, but it would be nice if the rocket lost none.

In April, propellant leaks and fires in the booster's engine compartment severed connection with the rocket's primary flight computer, and the vehicle lost control a little more than two minutes into the flight. Shortly thereafter, a self-destruct mechanism activated to blow up the rocket.

For the second test flight, SpaceX technicians tightened bolts in fuel manifold connections on the Raptor engines to reduce the risk of leaks. They've also beefed up shielding between the engines to protect adjacent Raptors from an explosion on a neighboring engine. On future launches, Raptor engines will have redesigned fuel manifolds to fully address the part that is prone to leaks.

두 번째 테스트 비행에서 SpaceX 기술자는 누출 위험을 줄이기 위해 Raptor 엔진의 연료 매니폴드 연결부의 볼트를 조였습니다. 그들은 또한 인접한 엔진의 폭발로부터 인접한 랩터를 보호하기 위해 엔진 사이의 차폐를 강화했습니다. 향후 출시 시 Raptor 엔진은 누출되기 쉬운 부품을 완전히 해결하기 위해 연료 매니폴드를 재설계할 것입니다.

"We do anticipate the Raptor engines will perform better for this test," said Lisa Watson-Morgan, manager of NASA's Human Landing System program, which oversees a SpaceX contract to develop a human-rated lunar lander based on the Starship design. "By the time of the Human Landing System Starship, we will be on a much later generation of Raptor, thereby having the predictability of the engines that is required for human-rating of the Starship itself."

NASA의 인간 착륙 시스템(Human Landing System) 프로그램 관리자인 리사 왓슨-모건(Lisa Watson-Morgan)은 "우리는 랩터 엔진이 이번 테스트에서 더 나은 성능을 발휘할 것으로 기대한다"고 말했다. 이 프로그램은 스타십 설계를 기반으로 인간 등급 달 착륙선을 개발하기 위한 SpaceX 계약을 감독하고 있다. "인간 착륙 시스템 우주선이 등장할 때쯤이면 우리는 랩터의 훨씬 후세대에 탑승하게 될 것이며, 이를 통해 우주선 자체에 대한 인간 평가에 필요한 엔진의 예측 가능성을 갖게 될 것입니다."

The Super Heavy booster's steering system also has an upgrade debuting on the second test flight. This is a switch from a hydraulic thrust vector control mechanism to an electric one to gimbal, or pivot, thrust from the cluster of 13 Raptor engines at the center of the Super Heavy booster. The outer ring of 20 engines do not gimbal.

3. How will hot staging work?

Then, at 2 minutes and 41 seconds into the flight, there's another big moment. This is when the Super Heavy booster will switch off its engines and release from the Starship upper stage to climbing into space.

The rocket flown on the April 20 test flight didn't make it this far before tumbling out of control. Assuming the rocket is still flying steady at this point, the Super Heavy booster will shut down most of its engines to start the stage separation sequence, followed by the physical disconnection of the stages at the exact moment the Raptor engines ignite on the upper stage. This "hot staging" technique, though novel for SpaceX, has been used on a number of Russian rockets for decades.

Typically, rockets switch off their booster engines for a few seconds before jettisoning the first stage, and then lighting the upper stage a moment later. The upshot of the change is it increases the Starship’s payload lift capability, which already amounted to more than 100 metric tons to low Earth orbit. But it means engineers had to add shielding to the top of the stainless steel booster, which SpaceX wants to recover and reuse numerous times.

One of the design changes required to implement hot staging is a new 6-foot extension to the top of the Super Heavy booster with vents to allow super-hot gas from the upper stage engines to safely flow out of the rocket’s structure “and not just blow itself up,” Musk said earlier this year. “This is the most risky thing, I think, for the next flight.”

핫 스테이징을 구현하는 데 필요한 설계 변경 중 하나는 상부 엔진의 초고온 가스가 로켓 구조 밖으로 안전하게 흘러나올 수 있도록 하는 통풍구가 있는 슈퍼 헤비 부스터 상단까지의 새로운 6피트 확장입니다. 스스로 폭파하라”고 머스크는 올해 초 말했다. "내 생각엔 이것이 다음 비행에서 가장 위험한 일인 것 같습니다."

"I think the probability of this next flight working, getting to orbit, is much higher than the last one," Musk continued. "Maybe it's like 60 percent. It depends on how well we do at stage separation.”

4. Can Starship fly in space?

SpaceX tested five Starship prototypes in 2020 and 2021 on high-altitude flights within the atmosphere, for the purpose of wringing out the company's concept on how to land the vehicle. These tests all ended in explosions until the last one on May 5, 2021, when a full-scale Starship upper stage safely landed after flying to an altitude of around 33,000 feet (10 kilometers).

4. 스타쉽이 우주에서 비행할 수 있습니까? SpaceX는 차량 착륙 방법에 대한 회사의 개념을 짜내기 위한 목적으로 대기권 내 고고도 비행에서 2020년과 2021년에 5개의 스타십 프로토타입을 테스트했습니다. 이러한 테스트는 2021년 5월 5일 마지막 테스트까지 모두 폭발로 끝났고, 본격적인 스타십 상부 스테이지는 약 10km 고도까지 비행한 뒤 안전하게 착륙했다.

These were dramatic events. SpaceX showed the Starship could descend back to Earth with a "belly flop" maneuver, then safely flip from horizontal to vertical orientation just before reaching the ground for a propulsive landing.

What those flights didn't do was test Starship in space. That could happen Saturday, assuming good performance from the Super Heavy booster. Starship's upper stage has six Raptor engines, three steerable engines in the center and three Raptors with larger fixed nozzles around the perimeter of the rocket. The three engines with larger nozzles are optimized for operation in the airless vacuum of space.

그 비행이 하지 못한 것은 우주에서 우주선을 시험하는 것이었습니다. 슈퍼 헤비 부스터의 좋은 성능을 가정하면 토요일에 그런 일이 일어날 수 있습니다. 스타쉽의 상부 스테이지에는 6개의 랩터 엔진이 있고, 중앙에 3개의 조종 가능한 엔진이 있으며, 로켓 주변에 더 큰 고정 노즐이 있는 3개의 랩터가 있습니다. 더 큰 노즐을 갖춘 3개의 엔진은 공기가 없는 진공 우주에서의 작동에 최적화되어 있습니다.

These six Raptor engines will produce nearly twice the thrust of the booster stage of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. That's a lot of oomph for an upper stage. The flight profile for SpaceX's second full-scale Starship test flight, designated OFT-2 or IFT-2, calls for the six upper stage Raptor engines to burn for around six minutes, until shutting off at 8 minutes and 33 seconds into the mission, accelerating the rocket nearly to orbital velocity.

But SpaceX has never tried to ignite Raptor engines in a space-like environment. The air pressure here is a tiny fraction of what it is at sea level. Several rockets have failed at ignition of their upper stages this year, including the inaugural flights of Japan's new H3 rocket and Relativity Space's Terran 1 rocket. Will Starship continue the trend?

그러나 SpaceX는 우주와 같은 환경에서 랩터 엔진을 점화시키려고 시도한 적이 없습니다. 이곳의 기압은 해수면보다 아주 작은 부분입니다. 일본의 새로운 H3 로켓과 Relativity Space의 Terran 1 로켓의 첫 비행을 포함하여 올해 여러 로켓이 상부 단계의 점화에 실패했습니다. 스타쉽이 이 추세를 이어갈 것인가?

5. Will the booster and ship make it back to Earth?

If everything goes perfectly, or close to it, Starship will coast through space for a little more than an hour. After initially heading east from South Texas over the Gulf of Mexico, Starship will fly over the Straits of Florida just north of Cuba, then over the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, and the Indian Ocean. SpaceX is intentionally not giving the rocket enough velocity to maintain a stable orbit, so Starship will reenter the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean and target a predawn splashdown northwest of Hawaii.

One side of the stainless steel Starship upper stage is covered with ceramic tiles to shield the rocket from the heat of reentry. There are fins on Starship to help guide it through the atmosphere before finally reaching the surface of the Pacific about 90 minutes after launching from Texas.

스테인레스 스틸 스타쉽 상단 스테이지의 한쪽은 세라믹 타일로 덮여 있어 로켓이 재진입하는 열기로부터 보호됩니다. 우주선에는 텍사스에서 발사된 지 약 90분 후에 마침내 태평양 표면에 도달하기 전에 대기권을 통과하도록 안내하는 지느러미가 있습니다.

The Super Heavy booster will also attempt a controlled splashdown in the sea after falling away from the Starship upper stage. Its target will be a controlled water landing in the Gulf of Mexico around 20 miles (32 kilometers) off the Texas coast, using thrust from a subset of its Raptor engines to brake for splashdown.

These recovery experiments are akin to SpaceX's tests of the recovery system on the Falcon 9 booster in the mid-2010s. Those tests ended in a series of crash landings before the company successfully landed a Falcon 9 booster of the first time in 2015, five years after the first Falcon 9 launch.

이러한 복구 실험은 2010년대 중반 Falcon 9 부스터의 복구 시스템에 대한 SpaceX의 테스트와 유사합니다. 이 테스트는 회사가 첫 번째 Falcon 9 출시 5년 후인 2015년에 처음으로 Falcon 9 부스터를 성공적으로 착륙시키기 전에 일련의 충돌 착륙으로 끝났습니다.

SpaceX eventually wants to land the Super Heavy booster and Starship vehicle back at their launch pad for inspections, refueling, and rapid reuse. For the rocket's experimental test flights, water landings will do.

SpaceX는 결국 검사, 재급유 및 신속한 재사용을 위해 Super Heavy 부스터와 Starship 차량을 발사대에 다시 착륙시키기를 원합니다. 로켓의 실험적 시험 비행의 경우 수상 착륙이 가능합니다.