Space News Weekly

  The Impact of Aerodynamic Design on Rocket Performance Rockets, magnificent machines defying gravity, owe much of their success to their meticulously crafted aerodynamic shapes. Far from being arbitrary, the external form of a rocket is a critical determinant of its flight characteristics, efficiency, and ultimate mission success. Different rockets employ varied designs, each optimized for specific goals, leading to fascinating differences in their operational profiles. At its core, aerodynamic design for rockets revolves around minimizing drag and optimizing stability. Drag, the resistive force of air, works against the rocket's upward thrust, consuming valuable fuel and limiting achievable altitudes and speeds. Stability, on the other hand, ensures the rocket maintains its intended trajectory, preventing uncontrolled tumbling or veering off course.     Let's look at some prominent examples. The Saturn V , the colossal rocket that took humans to the Moon, embodied a r...

 Recently, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk held a presentation about how he sees the future of SpaceX. He talked about Starship updates, new engines for it and the plan to colonise Mars year by year. The presentation took over 2 hours, but this is a shorter summarised form of it. STARSHIP BLOCK 3: The heatshield on Starship Block 3 will be significantly updated due to the Mars atmosphere having double the atomic oxygen of Earth. This creates more oxidation. SpaceX aims to use the same heatshield for both Earth and Mars and to make it fully reusable, though engineers acknowledge it is one of the hardest parts of the mission. The new Starship is lighter and structurally refined for overall better performace. The capacity will also be increased despite not changing the height. Block 3 reportedly holds an extra 50 tons of propellant. How it achieves this is still not clear. The mounts of central three engines on the booster are reclocked to reduce stress on the flame deflectors and increase...

 In this article I would like to focus on Kepler´s three laws of planetary motion. They are the backbone to all of astrodynamics and space travel. They have been formed centuries ago, but they still apply to this day. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), a German astronomer, stands as the monumental figure in the history of science, whose work fundamentally shaped humanity´s understanding of celestial motion. Before him, the prevailing belief, even within the then-revolutionaty Copernican heliocentric model (which correctly placed the Sun at the center of the solar system), was that planetary orbits were perfect circles. His research first struggled, as he could not understand how the orbits were precise circles (Mars´ orbit was especially problematic). He then came to a brilliant realisation - the planetary orbits were not perfect circles, but rather elongated or flattened circles know as ellipses. KEPLER´s FIRST LAW: This law is known as the law of ellipses. It states that “each plan...

 Rocket engines are the heart of spaceflight, providing immense power required to lift a vehicle from the surface of the Earth. While the fundamental principle remains Newton´s Third Law of Motion (for every action, there is an equal opposite reaction), engines have evolved drastically over the years. This week I would like to focus on the comparison of two rocket engines. Specifically a “traditional” rocket engine compared to the SpaceX Raptor engine used on the Starship. This means an open-cycle gas generator engine, compared to the revolutionary full-flow staged combustion Raptor engine. This comparison will highlight how a rocket engine works and what are the main differences between the traditional way of making them and the approach SpaceX took to rethink the rocket engine. THE TRADITIONAL ROCKET ENGINE: OPEN-CYCLE (GAS GENERATOR) Many iconic engines throughout history, from the Saturn V´s F-1 engine to the Space Shuttle´s SSMEs, have relied on variations of the open-cycl...