Page 50 - Life beyond the Karman

Starship is equipped with three Raptor engines and three Raptor Vacuum (RVac) engines, which are specifically designed for space travel.
Super Heavy is equipped with 33 Raptor engines. Thirteen are located in the centre while the remaining 20 are positioned around the perimeter of the aft end of the booster.
Starship uses tanker vehicles to refill spacecraft in orbit before interplanetary travel. Refilling on-orbit enables the transport of up to 100 tons to Mars. If the tanker ship has high reusability, the primary cost is only that of oxygen and methane, which is extremely low.
Falcon 9
Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket manufactured and designed by SpaceX. It is a reliable and reusable rocket capable of transporting people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond.
The Falcon 9 has transported numerous commercial and government spacecraft into orbit, including CubeSats, microsats, PocketQubes and orbital transfer vehicles. In January 2021, Falcon 9’s payload included three South African- built nanosatellites to space. These satellites were funded by the Department of Science and Innovation through South African National Space Agency (SANSA) and built at the Africa Space Innovation Center of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology as part of the MDASat-1 constellation that will aid South African authorities in monitoring and identifying vessels in South Africa’s coastal waters and combat illegal maritime operations.
The Space Launch System (SLS) Rockets
The SLS (Space Launch System) is one of the most massive and powerful rockets ever built. Its main engine is powered by four liquid-hydrogen and liquid-oxygen engines, while two solid rocket boosters flank the central stage. The boosters fall away two minutes after launch, and the central stage propels the Orion spacecraft into Earth orbit. When fully fuelled, the SLS weighs 2.6 million kilograms (5.74 million pounds) and has a
maximum thrust of 39 million newtons (8.8 million pounds).
With its unprecedented capabilities, NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) is perceived to be the trusted rocket that can send the Orion spacecraft, four astronauts, and large cargo directly to the Moon on a single mission; hence, it is associated with Artemis missions and other robotic scientific missions to other deep space destinations like the Moon, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter.
VEGA
In 2012, Vega joined the family of launch vehicles at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. It has demon- strated impressive capabilities in orbital to subor- bital missions, with single and multiple payloads.
Vega lifted payloads ranging from a single satellite to one main satellite plus several small satellites and placed them in differ- ent orbits on a single mission. This has made getting to space cheaper, faster, and easier. The Vega launch vehicle is ideal for most scientific and Earth observation missions. Vega consists of three solid-propellant stages and a liquid-propellant upper module that controls attitude, orbit, and satellite release.
Vega became an official ESA programme in June 1998, when the Agency took over Italy’s ASI space agency’s small-launcher programme. In 2015, Vega transitioned to full commercial exploitation, launching three missions per year (IXV, Sentinel-2A, and LISA Pathfinder), assisting Arianespace in maintaining its market leadership. In 2020, Vega demonstrated a new modular payload dispenser known as the Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS), which was designed to meet the demand for low-cost routine rideshare missions to space for multiple small satellites.
The next generation and evolutions of the Vega launch system are expected to boost competitiveness by providing an extended range of configurations based on widespread building blocks. These activities run concurrently with Vega-C development.