Connect with us

News

SpaceX wants to land its BFR spaceships “like a skydiver” on Earth and Mars

Published

on

Speaking at the company’s Hawthorne factory, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced a new strategy for efficiently recovering its next-gen BFR’s upper stage, describing a process where the spaceship would rely on a number of unintuitive techniques to reliably land on planets or moons with appreciable atmospheres (i.e. Mars, Earth, Titan). In essence, BFS would end up gliding towards the surface in free-fall, controlling its orientation much like an Earthly skydiver.

Several times throughout the BFR update and private lunar tourism announcement, Musk emphasized just how unintuitive the new procedures would be, stating that “it’s not like anything that people are familiar with – it’s not like an airplane.” His comparison with skydivers is actually rather apt for conveying why this approach is so unusual for a large, flying vehicle like BFR’s spaceship (BFS). Just like skydivers, BFS will have five main control surfaces to control its orientation, pitch, and general dynamics when operating in an atmosphere – two forward fins (like a skydiver’s arms), two rear fins (legs), and a body.

Also like a skydiver, those forward and aft controls are not aerodynamic in the sense of an airplane’s wing or tail fins – in the case of the skydiver and spaceship, they do not generate lift – in pilot and aerospace parlance, a surface that generates no lift is “stalled”. This is likely the main reason that Musk was so intent on conveying his feeling that the spaceship’s new flight regime was unintuitive – in the world of aerospace engineering, particularly for aerodynamicists, intentionally designed stalled control surfaces is almost oxymoronic, akin to an automotive engineer designing a car with square wheels. For all but fighter pilots, stalled aerodynamic surfaces are traditionally avoided like the plague, and can be frequently blamed for aviation-related fatalities.

Advertisement

Even to a layperson, the spaceship landing animation shown might look more like a rock uncontrollably plummeting to the ground than an advanced spaceship meant to land humans on Earth, Mars, and beyond. In essence, the proposal Musk laid out on September 17th takes the high-speed reentry characteristics of NASA’s retired Space Shuttle (aerobraking, S-turns, nose-up reentry), adopts a skydiver’s intuitive and efficient aerodynamic control scheme in free-fall, and replaces said skydiver’s parachutes with a group of high-performance rocket engines, as if a skydiver somehow managed to strap rockets to their feet to gently land on the ground.

SpaceX should have little trouble with the latter task thanks to 15 successful vertical landings of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters (and many more to come), while the spaceship’s Shuttle-style orbital reentry profile may be new for SpaceX but has been tackled successfully in the past by other companies/agencies. Free-falling to a successful landing with permanently stalled control surfaces, however, will undoubtedly demand an extensive test campaign in Earth’s atmosphere before SpaceX even thinks of placing humans on the craft, something that Musk foreshadowed in a 2017 Reddit AMA focused on BFR.

“Will be starting with a full-scale Ship doing short hops of a few hundred kilometers altitude and lateral distance. Those are fairly easy on the vehicle as no heat shield is needed.” – Elon Musk, October 2017

 

Advertisement

BFR’s design and the spaceship’s recovery profile may change further over the next 6-12 months, given that the team’s unintuitive freefall realization seems to be a fresh addition to the Mars rocket. Nevertheless, Musk and COO Gwynne Shotwell have publicly stated that they believe Grasshopper-style spaceship hop tests could commence as early as late 2019 or early 2020, with the first orbital BFR launches starting soon after in the 2020/2021 timeframe.


For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

Advertisement
Comments

News

Tesla is testing a new way to eliminate a rare but concerning Supercharger issue

Tesla is testing a new way to end a rare issue at Superchargers, and its internal pilot program has already started.

Published

on

tesla supercharger
Credit: Tesla

Tesla is now testing a new way to eliminate a rare but concerning issue that can arise at Superchargers, especially as the company’s vehicles become more popular.

Tesla’s Supercharger Network is the most robust in the world, but the company has opened it up to other manufacturers, which makes the network even more congested than it already is.

Superchargers are continually being built, and existing stations are undergoing expansion in congested areas. However, there is one rare issue that still arises from time to time, and that’s the case of drivers cutting in line to charge before another vehicle that arrived before they did.

Tesla is rolling out a new ‘Supercharger queue’ in an effort to end one issue

A few months ago, Tesla said it would start testing a “virtual queuing” system that would tell cars what their position is in line. This would eliminate any instances of confusion between drivers and would also keep cutters from butting in front of those who arrived before them.

Advertisement

Now, Tesla is officially testing the program, according to Max de Zegher, the company’s North American charging head:

Public pilots will begin soon at select sites after Tesla completes its internal testing. Admittedly, this is an incredibly rare issue, but it is something that is worth confronting because it will eliminate confrontations at Superchargers.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Tesla still has two major milestones on track before end of Q2

Tesla still is on track to complete two monumental achievements as Q2 nears its end.

Published

on

tesla-model-y-giga-texas-logo
(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla still has two major milestones it is on track to complete before the end of the second quarter, according to statements made by the automaker earlier this year.

With the launch of the Robotaxi platform in Austin on Sunday, Tesla has already completed perhaps its biggest milestone of 2025.

However, these are not the only things the company hopes to accomplish before we head into the latter half of the year, as there are two major things the company said it is aiming to complete before the third quarter starts next week.

Affordable Models

Tesla said earlier this year, on two separate occasions, that it is still on track to develop, build, and unveil the first affordable models that will be built on both the next-gen platform and also have aspects of the current vehicle platform.

Potential affordable Tesla “Model 2/Model Q” test car spotted anew in Giga Texas

Advertisement

In the Q4 2024 Earnings Call in January, the company said:

“Preparations are underway across our existing factories for the launch of new products in 2025, including more affordable models.”

The company continued:

“Plans for new vehicles, including more affordable models, remain on track for start of production in the first half of 2025. These vehicles will utilize aspects of the next generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms and will be produced on the same manufacturing lines as our current vehicle line-up.”

Although there are only a few days left, Tesla has yet to confirm that these affordable models are delayed, so we can expect that they’ll be arriving before the quarter ends.

Advertisement

The company might have been hinting toward one recently at the Fremont Factory, but it is more likely that the vehicle seen was the new Model Y Performance trim:

Tesla’s apparent affordable model zips around Fremont test track

Tesla delivers itself to customers

Back in late May, CEO Elon Musk said that the first Tesla to self-deliver would happen in June:

Tesla just launched its Robotaxi platform on Sunday, so this would be a tremendous step if it can, in fact, make this happen.

The customer would likely be extremely local to Gigafactory Texas. In the future, the company would load the vehicles onto haulers and then drive to customer homes from delivery centers, showrooms, and repair centers.

Teslas will self-deliver to customers, Elon Musk says: here’s when

Advertisement

Tesla has a few days left to complete both of these tasks, and then it will report delivery figures for the second quarter next week.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Tesla’s Omead Afshar, known as Elon Musk’s right-hand man, leaves company: reports

Tesla’s Head of North American sales and European ops, Omead Afshar, has reportedly left the company. He was widely-known as Elon Musk’s right-hand man.

Published

on

Credit: Elon Musk | X

Tesla’s Omead Afshar, who is widely known as CEO Elon Musk’s right-hand man, has reportedly left the company.

Several outlets are reporting that Afshar either left voluntarily or was potentially terminated on Thursday. His LinkedIn profile has not been updated to reflect this, and still states he presently works at Tesla in the “Office of the CEO.”

Afshar was promoted to Head of North American sales and European operations late last year. We reported on his promotion in October, as he was previously a Project Manager in the Office of the CEO before Musk and co. stepped up his responsibilities.

According to the initial report on Afshar’s departure from Bloomberg, the news has been circulating throughout the company in recent days. His name no longer appears in the company’s internal directory.

It is interesting to think about what could have caused this. Tesla has felt some pressure in Europe with struggling sales figures in some markets. It is the second-best-selling EV maker in the region, with Volkswagen performing slightly better for the year, according to EU-EVs.

Advertisement

Tesla’s Model Y is the best-selling EV in the region.

While the company has not directly confirmed the news, it appears to be true based on the reports.

Tesla is usually relatively quick to dispel any headlines that go out from mainstream media that are not factual. This has yet to be responded to by any executive, including Musk.

Afshar has been with Tesla for seven years and ten months, first joining in September 2017 as a Project Manager in the Office of the CEO.

He then became a Project Director, before his job title was updated to a Cowboy hat emoji in July 2020, around the time Tesla started moving some things to Texas.

Advertisement

Forbes is reporting that Afshar was terminated and did not leave voluntarily. This has yet to be confirmed.

Continue Reading

Trending