On the night of September 26, local time in Eastern United States, the new generation of SLS super heavy moon landing rocket in the United States was forced to push from the L-39A launch tower back to the VAB vertical assembly building due to the impact of hurricane weather. This also marks the three consecutive times that the SLS super-heavy moon landing rockets were postponed or cancelled for various reasons. After the fuel recharge leak, repeated recharge leaks, and the impact of Hurricane , they finally stopped being arrogant and chose to push back to the Kennedy Space Launch Center Vertical General Transfer Building, and chose to launch again on November 12 at the right time.
, which also means that if the SLS moon landing rocket cannot choose the right time to launch and launch successfully in October, the SLS moon landing rocket project led by NASA in the United States will be completely honored. Because recently, the CEO of SpaceX Space Exploration Technology, Elon Musk , has officially stated to the public that the first orbital test mission of the Starship and super heavy booster, which has been developed and tested many times, may be launched before the end of October and will be launched in November at the latest. , which means that if the NASA-led SLS moon rocket cannot be launched before November 13, the SLS will be fine after the SpaceX starship is successfully launched.
After all, in terms of performance, the starship comprehensively crushes the SLS lunar landing rocket. For example, in terms of low-Earth orbit capacity, the manned version of the SLS super-heavy lunar landing rocket has a low-Earth orbit capacity of only 95 tons, which is not as strong as the Saturn V lunar landing rocket 60 years ago. In contrast, the orbital capacity of the Starship Golden Earth under SpaceX is 100 tons, which can be improved to above 150 tons after later optimization, and the orbital capacity around the moon is also more than 80 tons.
Of course, the low-Earth orbit carrying capacity of freight versions such as SLS is as high as 130 tons, and the lunar orbital carrying capacity is more than 80 tons, but in front of the mass-produced version of the starship, there is still no advantage. Because according to the planned parameters announced by SpaceX, the maximum carrying capacity of the mass-produced version of Starship in the future will be as high as more than 250 tons in the near-Earth orbit, and the maximum carrying capacity of the orbit around the moon will also exceed more than 100 tons. After all, its maximum take-off thrust is as high as 7,500 tons, which is far from comparable to the SLS with a maximum take-off thrust of less than 4,000 tons.
At the same time, compared with the SLS lunar landing rocket, the cost of launching a one-time cost of up to US$4.1 billion is that the Starship's first-stage super-heavy booster can be reused many times after vertical recovery, and the second-stage is also equipped with a complete power system. In addition to being able to continuously operate in orbit, travel back and forth between the Earth and the moon orbits, it can also be returned vertically and reused, and the number of reused uses is estimated to reach more than 100 times.
That is more cost-effective for the Congress of the CPC, rather than spending billions of dollars each time to launch a one-time SLS moon rocket, a starship cost of $200 million, a single launch of no more than $10 million, and can be recycled vertically and reused.
, in particular, in addition to being used for manned moon landing, the starship also has deep space exploration and launch capabilities. This is because it has only had the ability to orbit around the moon from the beginning, and does not have the advantages that SLS, which directly lands on the moon, does not have. For example, although the SLS orbital orbit has a capacity of nearly 50 tons, the lunar landing device it launches can only operate in orbital orbit and cannot directly carry out manned lunar landing missions. This is mainly related to the Orion manned spacecraft carried by SLS.
In contrast, although the starship only has a secondary structure, in addition to being able to fly directly from low-Earth orbit to the lunar orbit and all land in any area of the moon, the above stage also has the capacity to load large cargo holds such as lunar rover and lunar base construction materials. After completing manned lunar landing exploration, the astronauts directly took off and returned to the starship by elevator. The starship took off independently and flew back to the earth and landed vertically on the scheduled landing ground on the earth. Compared with traditional manned lunar rockets such as SLS, directly reduced the demand for in-orbit docking for more than three times, which not only increased the launch load rate, but also fundamentally reduced the failure rate by at least 90%.
So in the next two months, if the SLS led by NASA really cannot be launched on time, it will really become a "cannot help". At that time, the US manned moon landing plan will really become SpaceX's starship.
At the same time, in the manned lunar landing plan that my country is implementing, although the launch time and landing on the moon based on the Long March 5 may be earlier, it will be carried out around 2025. But for China, the Long March 9 super-heavy moon landing rocket, which is planned to be launched in 2028, is the leading rocket that directly targets the SpaceX starship's manned moon landing and deep space exploration.
Because the carrying capacity of Long March 9 is more than 130 tons in the low-Earth orbit, and the carrying capacity of lunar orbit is not less than 60 tons, it is not only very close to the current technical parameters of the starship, but also compared with the very radical starship of the Long March 9, its slightly conservative design is actually its success, and even China and the United States, helping China take the lead in implementing manned moon landing.
For example, although the maximum take-off thrust of Starship is as high as 7500 tons, the thrust of this 7500 tons needs to be provided by 29 Raptor liquid oxygen methane rocket engines. The Raptor liquid rocket engine independently developed by SpaceX is currently the only liquid rocket engine in the world that uses full flow stage combustion. Moreover, using methane instead of kerosene does not have the risk of nozzle coking, and methane is cheaper than kerosene and is higher than flushing, making it more suitable for repeated and low-cost use.
But there are many risks on the Starship. For example, its booster uses up to 29 Raptor liquid rocket engines, and Starship also uses 7 Raptor vacuum versions. According to the practice of the smaller the number and lower the risk in aerospace design, the Starship has installed so many engines, whether it is a booster or the Starship itself. Even if SpaceX uses fuel interoperability and engine thrust compensation design for it, during the actual launch process, once a certain engine explodes, or more than 4 engines fail, the Starship will all crash.
was the same as when the Cold War period, the Soviet Union could not create a large-thrust rocket engine, so its lunar rocket N1 core stage used up to 33 small-thrust liquid rocket engines to make up for the insufficient total thrust of the engine taking off. However, during the actual launch process, the failure of the launch due to the excessive number of engines became the norm and the core factor for its final dismount.
So corresponding to the Starship 60 years later, the reason why SpaceX installed up to 27 Raptor liquid rocket engines in the Starship booster is that although SpaceX has dug up many experts in the aerospace field from NASA, especially liquid rocket engine experts, SpaceX still cannot create a liquid rocket engine with high combustion efficiency and high thrust, so in the end, it can only choose a Raptor liquid oxygen methane rocket engine with a single thrust of only 230 tons but very high fuel efficiency.
In contrast, the Long March 9 superheavy launch vehicle under development in my country, although its maximum take-off total thrust, its launch cost and overall technical level are not outstanding compared to Starships, but its biggest advantage in Long March 9 is its absolute reliability, because the core first stage and booster use the YF130 liquid oxygen kerosene rocket engine with a single thrust of up to 480 tons, and the number is only 13; the core second stage only uses 4 YF-90 hydrogen-oxygen rocket engines with a single thrust of 220 tons, and the core third stage only uses two hydrogen-oxygen rocket engines with a single thrust of 25 tons. : The number of rocket engines equipped by the full arrow of the Long March 9 is not as high as the number of starship boosters, so the fewer engines significantly improve the launch safety of the Long March 9.
In fact, from the field of aerospace itself, those who truly develop aerospace will not choose technical solutions with insufficient thrust and quantity. For example, in history, Saturn V core stage 1 and boosters use F-1 rocket engine with a single thrust of more than 680 tons, with a total of only 5 units. The core stage 2 uses 5 J-2 hydrogen and oxygen rocket engines with 8 tons thrust, and the core stage 3 uses a J-2 engine; the space shuttle , Delta-4, and European Ariane-5 all use large thrust and few engine solutions, and the core stage 2 and core stage 3 that enter outer space or are near outer space, all use hydrogen and oxygen rocket engines with higher combustion efficiency and higher than impulse.
And my country's Long March 9 took this route of Changshu , but the second stage of the Starship still uses a hydroxide rocket engine with a 352-second magnitude rush. Therefore, more than 2/3 of the entire Starship's space is used to load more than 1,000 tons of liquid fuel. So many large fuels undoubtedly increase risks and hidden dangers.
Of course, from the overall perspective, perhaps SpaceX's starship and China's Long March 9 will succeed, and will become the main models of China and the United States leading manned moon landing and deep space exploration in the future. However, in terms of technological maturity and launch risks, the Long March 9 is obviously better than the starships that technology is used to make up.
