To infinity and beyond!
SpaceX is a forward-thinking aerospace manufacturing company with amazing innovations always on the horizon. The company is known for developing technologies to colonize mars, reduce space transportation costs, and designing the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launch vehicles.
Elon Musk, Founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX, recently tweeted a short (but awesome) video of how a rocket nozzle is formed. As one can surmise, anything used for space travel has to be durable and extremely strong. The Falcon 9, for example, is known for having a “thrust greater than five 747s at full power.” Check out the process below!
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is specifically designed to safely transport satellites and carry the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. This structure weighs in at 549,054 kg (1,207,920 lb) and is packed with nine first-stage Merlin engines with a burn time of 162 seconds. Equipped with a high engine count, the Falcon 9 can sustain up to two engine failures and still continue its course until the mission is a success. The Falcon 9 is the only known launch vehicle operational today that has this fail-safe technology.
According to SpaceX, “Falcon 9 generates more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust at sea level but gets up to over 1.8 million pounds of thrust in the vacuum of space.”
If that very short video wasn’t enough to satisfy your SpaceX curiosity, below you’ll find Elon Musk describing the future methods that’ll assist the design process.
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense