SpaceX BFR vs NASA's SLS - The quest to interplanetary settlements.
- Octet Ridges
- Nov 2, 2019
- 2 min read
The space industry is growing fast. Mainly, the small satellite industry with companies like Rocket Lab are offering launches for cubesats, is in the business. But what about the kings? The strongest rocket ever made by man is without doubt the Saturn V or the rocket which took humans to the moon. It had a thrust of 35 Mega Newtons [NM] or 3569006.7 kgf at lift-off.
But , was a 50 years back. Why haven't we built bigger rockets? Until now. SpaceX and NASA , both have big plans for their next super heavy lift rockets. SpaceX enters this realm with their upcoming BFR or Big Falcon Rocket designed main to get humans to Mars. It can lift up to 150,000 kg or 330,000 lb to Low Earth Orbit [Leo] and 100,000 kg to Mars. Man! Those are big numbers. It is said to have a total thrust of 72 MN at liftoff. Compare that to the Saturn V, its more than twice the thrust. Its gets this thrust with the help of 37 mighty Raptor engines , about which I have briefly covered in my first blog. It is a two stage to orbit rocket and the upper stage is known as Starship. The rocket stands a massive 118m tall compared to the Saturn V which stood a 108m tall. The booster is 9m wide which is just a little smaller than the 10m wide Saturn 5. The cool thing is that it is a 100% reusable. The Falcon Heavy is itself 90% reusable. SpaceX recovers their second stage or the Starship by what they call a "Belly Dive" through the atmosphere with its belly being a heat shield which faces towards the ground during re-entry. Meanwhile the booster is going to land exactly where it took off from. After Starship enters the atmosphere , it lands back on the ground and refuels back for another flight to space. This project is said to cost SpaceX 2-3 billion USD. Then , there is NASA's SLS or the Space Launch System. It is NASA's super heavy launch vehicle which is mainly designed to get humans back to the moon for the Artemis mission. The SLS can lift up to 290,000 lb or 130,000 kg to LEO [On the Block 2 version]. The SLS will carry the astronauts onboard NASA's Orion capsule. The rocket is powered by twin five-segment solid rocket boosters and four RS-25 liquid propellant engines. Fun fact , the RS-25 engines were the exact same engine which were the main engines for the Space Shuttle. The SLS is also a two stage to orbit rocket. The rocket stands 111.25m tall and has a core diameter of 8.4m. The only thing that disappointing me is that it is not reusable but expendable , which means it can only fly once with all its precious engines and parts thrown off into the oceans. This project can cost NASA up to 42 billion USD [including the Artemis program].
Hope this blog will help you understand more about these two beast of a rockets and make sure to subscribe to my blogs so that you'll get notified when I post my next.
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