You are here by. ⇡ Will we wake up tomorrow in a new world? ⇡ Debriefing

On March 30 at 22:27 UTC, when it was almost half past one in the morning in Moscow on March 31, the Falcon launch vehicle was launched from the historical launch complex LC-39A of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida, from where the Apolloes flew to the Moon at one time. 9 FT. In its composition, for the first time in the history of world cosmonautics, a rocket stage with liquid propellant engines went on a space mission again (the first flight of the CRS-8 with cargo ship Dragon took place on April 8, 2016). The SpaceX rocket successfully launched the SES-10 communications satellite into orbit, and the first stage - the "veteran" - made a soft landing on the automatic barge "Of Course I Still Love You".

⇡ Fears, insurance and launch

The “epoch-making” of the event could be assessed by the reaction shown by the electronic and print media. Still would! “Musk plans (and, according to many, is making) a revolution in the implementation of space transport operations: he re-uses a stage in the launch vehicle, which has already completed its mission to launch a satellite once, returned safely to earth, was rescued and restored ".

Officially, the main task of the mission was to launch the SES-10 communications satellite into geostationary orbit. However, everyone understood that with this flight, SpaceX planned to demonstrate the possibility of repeated use of the first stage after returning from space. An auxiliary task was considered to be the landing of a stage (after completing the main task) on a remotely controlled barge, which was at sea along the launch trajectory. As a bonus, an attempt was planned to rescue the flaps of the head fairing.

Veterans of rocket and space technology argued that "the customer of the launch would never agree to reuse used materiel, especially at the most intense launch site." However, SES S.A. - a global satellite operator headquartered in Luxembourg - not only went, but also with its support allowed SpaceX to perform the first re-launch of the rocket with a real ("live") payload, and not with a mock-up, as some suggested.

“As the first commercial satellite operator to complete a mission with SpaceX back in 2013, we are delighted to be the first to re-fly into space again,” said Martin Halliwell, CTO at SES. "We believe that reusable rockets will usher in a new era of space travel, making them more affordable and less expensive."

After the triumphant return of the rocket stage from tail number 1021 almost a year ago, SpaceX specialists conducted a detailed analysis of the state of this rocket unit. Most of all they were worried about the engines - eight "Merlins-1D", assembled in a ring around the ninth, central. To reuse the stages, it was important to have 100% confidence in their serviceability after several cycles of operation, as well as due to the influence of thermodynamic loads during the return to the atmosphere from the launch trajectory.

Throughout its life - up to this very night - the first stage # 1021 was repeatedly “tested by fire” and, as a result, before the second launch it worked six on / off switches of the propulsion system (three of them were in the first flight).

“We did not repair these engines, we just wanted to change some of the gaskets ... - said the technicians at the end of January 2017 before the fire tests at the SpaceX stand in McGregor, Texas. “But we just removed these engines, tested them, put them back in and are burning them right now.”

It should be noted that SES representatives have been involved in preparations for this launch over the past several months. According to Halliwell, "SpaceX gave SES engineers ..." full transparency "in their actions, allowed a glimpse into the process of preparing engines and onboard electronics, as well as familiarize themselves with the test results."

It was also surprising that the insurance premium for the first flight of the "used" stage was not increased, as if everyone understood that the attention to this launch was special and SpaceX was putting a lot at stake. As a result, the level of preparation of the mission will be unprecedentedly high. According to observers, "in terms of design reliability, the carrier will not be much lower than the previous ones."

As for the growth of insurance, then “we can talk about hundredths of a percent, - said Halliwell. "In fact, there have been no changes in the insurance premium."

So, a huge - 70 m high - "pasta" Falcon 9 FT was installed in the launching device in the evening on the eve of launch. The duration of the start window was 150 minutes. Under the rocket's nose cone was SES 10, a communications satellite manufactured by the European consortium Airbus Defense and Space to broadcast television programs and transmit data from geostationary orbit throughout Latin America.

The timeline below describes the estimated launch sequence for SpaceX's first mission with a previously flown, rescued, and rebuilt first stage rocket.

Nine engines of the first stage of the rocket were turned on a couple of seconds before launch for an automatic check of operability. After the test, the holding clamps released the rocket, and the Falcon 9 lifted off the LC-39A pad and lay on its flight path.

Soon, the sound barrier and the zone of maximum aerodynamic pressure were successively passed. After working for the prescribed 158 seconds, the engines of the first stage turned off, and after three seconds the stages split.

After turning on the only engine of the second stage, when the carrier had already left the dense layers of the atmosphere, a huge carbon fiber head fairing with a diameter of 5.2 m was dropped.

While the second stage engine was still running, the first stage performed a somersault, opened the lattice aerodynamic rudders in the front and switched on three of the nine engines for braking for 20 seconds in order to slow down the entry velocity and create a gas-dynamic “bell” around the tail section.

The last activation of the central engine for a soft landing occurred immediately before landing: the step went to the barge located in Atlantic Ocean approximately 340 miles (550 km) east of Cape Canaveral. At that moment, the TV broadcast was interrupted, but the control room exploded with an ovation when a step appeared on the screen, standing on "legs" on the deck of the drone ship.

At this very time, the second stage was completing the achievement of an intermediate low orbit. The engine was turned off and a short 18-minute passive leg (“ballistic pause”) began.

This was followed by a short turn on by Elon Musk, who spoke about the "giant revolution in space flight" and congratulated his colleagues on the victory that everyone had been waiting for.

Then the Merlin 1D Vacuum started up again and transferred the rocket into a highly elliptical orbit with an apogee near the geostationary. The satellite separated from the second stage 32 minutes after launch.

⇡ Debriefing

How historically significant has the re-flight of the rocket stage become? The opinions on this issue were divided even before the mission. Someone considered this a breakthrough in launch vehicles that would drastically reduce the cost of access to space. Someone thought differently, calling SpaceX's experiments "show and circus", which has nothing to do with technical and economic feasibility.

But an objective view presupposes balance. In the history of astronautics, the technical feasibility of multiple use of solid-propellant launching accelerators in orbital launches (Space Shuttle) and liquid-propellant rocket units in suborbital flights (New Shepard of Blue Origin) has been confirmed in practice. Musk was the first to solve the technical problem of re-using the liquid stage of an orbital carrier, complicated by the fuel components used (when kerosene is burned in liquid oxygen, soot falls out in engine units, causing many serious troubles). This is a significant technical achievement.

However, reusability is needed to keep costs down. And here everything is not so simple. SpaceX spent at least four months and an unknown amount of money on the repair, restoration and testing of the already flown stage. And reuse makes sense as long as the cost of the "flight service" does not exceed the savings in the manufacture of a new stage. They say that the customer for the launch of SES-10 cost about $ 40 million - a third less than the standard price tag. This is a special price based on possible risks. Whether Musk will be able to maintain such an indicator when reusing the first stages in regular operation is a big question. Cautious experts predict a possible decrease in the price by ten percent. And these are not the figures that will "dramatically" reduce the cost of space launches. In other words, Musk has proven the technical feasibility of re-using rocket technology, and the economic feasibility has yet to be proven.

However, Halliwell said in advance that if the launch is successful, his company will be able to launch two more satellites - SES 14 and SES 16 - at the end of this year on previously used accelerators. "SpaceX's next designated spacecraft, SES 11, will fly this summer on a recently launched rocket," he said.

In addition, according to him, the transition to reusable missiles is unlikely to be canceled even in the event of an accident.

⇡ Comparison

To more accurately understand what new heights Musk has reached, let's take a closer look at possible options rescue of the lower (first) stages of launch vehicles. To date, three main methods have been studied in some detail:

1. Vertical parachuting (if necessary, using soft-landing rocket engines at the last stage).
2. Horizontal gliding using wings or gliding parachutes.
3. Vertical jet landing on main or auxiliary rocket engines.

The main advantage of these methods can be considered that they allow you to create a system (lower stage) with repeated use of the material part as part of the rocket-space complex, and this two to three times (depending on the frequency of use) reduces the cost of launching the payload.

The main disadvantages of the methods are reduced to the complication and rise in the cost of development, manufacture, testing and operation of the stage, an increase in its "passive" mass, which, as a result, can lead not to a fall, but to an increase in the unit cost of launching a payload.

⇡ Parachute and parachute-jet landing

To date, it has been successfully implemented only in the Space Shuttle system for the return of starting solid-propellant boosters when landing on water, and was also considered to rescue the side blocks of the first stage of the Energia launch vehicle (it has not been brought to practical implementation). Attempts to rescue the first stages of the Falcon-1 launch vehicle using a parachute were unsuccessful. It is also worth recalling the individual experiments to rescue the boosters of the Ariane-5 launch vehicle. The method of helicopter pick-up of parachuting blocks of the "Angara" launch vehicle was theoretically studied.

Advantages of a parachute landing:

1. allows the use of the earth's atmosphere for damping the residual velocity after the separation of the first and second stages;
2. relative ease of implementation for robust and stable systems such as solid propellant boosters;
3. relatively small costs of mass for them.

Disadvantages:

1. large areas of domes, the standard opening of which turns into a difficult problem to solve when the mass of returned goods (in this case, spent stages) exceeds 20-30 tons;
2. the inability to ensure an accurate landing due to the effects of wind and other atmospheric disturbances, as well as the absence of active landing controls (for disk and dome parachutes);
3. relatively large costs of mass for fragile liquid-propellant rocket blocks due to the need to install additional funds(soft landing engines, landing supports, stiffening elements) for speed and overload damping at the last stage of landing. Thus, for Block A of the Energia carrier rocket, the mass of the rescue and landing equipment constituted a significant part of the final mass, which led to an increase in the cost of developing and building the system. Block A in a one-time version without means of rescue had 60% less mass, in addition, the cost of the reusable block A in 1990 was 18 million rubles, while the launch of the Zenit launch vehicle, including a one-time analogue of Block A, did not cost more expensive than 6 million rubles;
4. high overloads during braking in the atmosphere, at the moment of putting the parachute system into operation and at the moment of touching the surface (in the absence of soft landing engines);
5. lack of guarantees for the safety of the structure (especially fluid blocks) during landing due to the impossibility (or extreme difficulty) of ensuring zero vertical and horizontal speed and, accordingly, the presence of shock loads;
6. when landing directly in water - relatively large shock loads and a high risk of corrosion of structural elements;
7. great difficulties in transporting large-sized long steps from the landing site to a repair plant or a cosmodrome.

⇡ Planned Airplane Landing

Currently, a horizontal gliding landing at an airfield using a relatively high aerodynamic quality has been implemented on the Space Shuttle winged orbital stage, on the Buran orbital spacecraft and on the Kh-37 experimental rocket plane. In numerous projects of the 1960-2000s, this method was considered as the main one.

Advantages:

1. allows you to use the atmosphere not only for damping residual speeds, but also for maneuvering (within certain limits) along the longitudinal and lateral range to select a landing site with minimal fuel consumption;
2. ideally, it is possible to return and land in the launch area, thereby reducing the cost of conducting search and rescue and transport operations;
3. high landing accuracy (within the runway) due to the presence of aerodynamic controls;
4. low overloads during braking in the atmosphere (approximately 1.5-2 units);
5. low impact loads during landing (vertical speed of about 3 m / s can be absorbed by the chassis shock absorbers).

Disadvantages:

1. high complexity and cost of development, production, testing and operation due to the presence of aircraft systems and assemblies (wing, empennage, landing gear, auxiliary engines, aerodynamic controls, complex hydraulic system, etc.)
2. great bulkiness and high mass consumption due to the presence of aircraft systems (up to 25-30% of the final mass of the rescued unit);
3. restrictions on operation are possible (limits on the program for changing the angles of attack at launch and at the atmospheric launch site, as well as exceptionally accurate compliance with the parameters of entry into the atmosphere and restrictions on the wind speed along the return route and at the landing site);
4. impossibility of making a go-around for a horizontal landing (to realize such a chance, it is necessary to equip the returned unit with an auxiliary propulsion system and a fuel supply, which further increases the “inert” mass);
5. the need to strengthen tanks and other compartments (leads to an increase in the final mass of the block), associated with high lateral loads, which are not typical for disposable rocket technology.

⇡ Vertical jet landing

To date, jet landing has been sufficiently developed on the first stage of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle (SpaceX company) and the NewShepard suborbital system (Blue Origin), as well as on the landing craft of interplanetary (mainly lunar) probes and experimental DC-X type aircraft. and Grasshopper. Jet landing on auxiliary turbojet engines was considered in the project of the reusable rocket and space system "Rise" of the enterprise, which is now called the Rocket and Space Center (RSC) "Progress", Samara.

Advantages:

1. relatively low cost of development and production, since the main mass expenditures are spent on the cheapest component of the system - rocket fuel;
2. the ability to limit overloads when braking in the atmosphere;
3. the ability to accurately land, including in the launch area (reducing the cost of search and rescue and transport operations);
4. low landing loads (near zero speed) and low lateral loads during descent into the atmosphere;
5. low losses in the mass of the payload during landing in the area of ​​the normal fall of the block (or on the landing platform in the ocean) - from 5 to 15%;
6. the possibility of using the rocket unit in both reusable and disposable versions (expanding the flexibility of operation).

Disadvantages:

1. poor use of the earth's atmosphere for damping residual velocities;
2. increased requirements for the control system (in fact, technologies were used that are more characteristic of modern high-precision weapons than rocket and space complexes);
3. complication of the rocket unit due to the installation of additional systems (auxiliary rocket nozzles or engines, aerodynamic controls, landing supports);
4. high loss of payload mass when the stage returns to the launch site (up to 30-50%);
5. operating restrictions (first of all, wind speed and direction along the descent route and at the landing site);
6. stricter requirements for the propulsion system (the need for rapid multiple automatic start-up in flight and the possibility of deep throttling of thrust during landing).

⇡ Will we wake up in a new world tomorrow?

Currently, following the impressive successes of SpaceX and Blue Origin, a vertical jet landing is preferable in terms of operating costs for the entire system, according to several experts. However, the choice must be made on the basis of many times confirmed examples, supported by real cost figures.

For example, the success of this method, demonstrated by the Elon Musk company, is largely due to the possibility of a simple, quick and cheap delivery of a dead stage by a self-propelled vessel to the American coastal spaceport: the declared minimum losses in the mass of the payload are combined with the minimum costs for search and rescue and transport operations. In the conditions of "continental" cosmodromes (Vostochny, Baikonur, Plesetsk), landing a stage in the taiga or in the desert in the absence of transport infrastructure may turn out to be unacceptable, and the only possible return to the launch site may be. In this case, the aircraft method may become more profitable (due to lower losses in the mass of the payload).

When launching rockets from continental spaceports, landing a reusable stage on rough terrain is unacceptable

Combined return methods are possible (and widely considered), including, for example, the use of the aerodynamic quality of the entire stage in the braking section in the atmosphere in combination with a parachute-jet landing of a unit separated from the tank compartments with the most expensive and complex equipment - propulsion engines and a control system.

In any case, it should be noted that the current criteria for the development of disposable launch vehicles are apparently unacceptable (or require significant adjustment) when creating reusable rocket and space systems, even including one (first) stage with vertical jet landing.

Just ten years ago, on September 28, 2008, SpaceX was able to send a satellite into orbit for the first time - using a Falcon 1 light-class rocket. Since then, the company has developed the heavy launch vehicles Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy and captured with their help half of the global commercial launch market. , is building a giant BFR rocket, and in another ten years expects to have its own inhabited base on Mars. The company's fantastic successes raise a lot of questions: how did it happen that the "private trader" was able to bypass even some well-deserved space powers in a negligible time? And what is the price of Elon Musk's promises to get to the Moon and Mars? Editorial staff N + 1 asked experts - Director of the Institute of Space Policy Ivan Moiseev and editor of the Novosti Cosmonautics magazine Igor Afanasyev to explain the rapid development of SpaceX and evaluate its plans for the future.

The Dragon cargo spacecraft during docking with the ISS

"Maskophobes" attribute SpaceX's success to the fact that the company received funding and technology from NASA. Is that the point?

Ivan Moiseev : NASA paid for the Falcon 9 rocket, as they say, "on the vine." This means that the rocket has not yet been built, and the US space agency has already begun paying out money to SpaceX - as part of contracts for the delivery of cargo aboard the International Space Station. SpaceX managed to effectively use this money and expand its activities - to receive orders for satellite launches from other countries, from the US military and from telecommunications companies.

Of course, these successes would not have been possible without the technological capital that was collected in the United States for this moment... And the task of NASA, both then and now, was precisely to introduce the intellectual property that is concentrated in the agency. This has been a huge contributor to the success of SpaceX.

Igor Afanasiev Undoubtedly, external funding from NASA and other government agencies (in particular, from DARPA) in the early (but not in the early) stages of the development of launch vehicles and spacecraft has significantly influenced the success of SpaceX.

However, one cannot discount the fact that Musk started working on the company's money (one might say, on his own) and / or on funds that he was able to attract through external sources and venture capital funds. And these amounts were measured in six-seven-digit numbers and grew from stage to stage. In particular, when developing the light Falcon 1 rocket, Musk understood that his own savings would barely be enough to create a small, relatively simple launch vehicle, and from the very inception of SpaceX, it was necessary to establish good relations with government departments - NASA and the Pentagon - most interested in research and space exploration.

Having made the first rocket and demonstrated to potential customers the capabilities of his company, Musk secured state support and was able to build on its basis a powerful Falcon 9. Following this, SpaceX, armed with a new launch vehicle, became not only another player in the launch services market, but also a powerful driver of development rocket and space technology in the United States and around the world.

Shares of companies and countries in the market of commercial launches

Tim Hughes, SpaceX

The same can be said for intellectual property. And here we are talking, rather, not about obtaining technologies belonging to NASA, but in specific people with extensive experience in the rocket and space industry. It was these people that Musk sought to get by any means, it was they who made up the intellectual backbone of SpaceX.

However, there are also conspiracy points of view, for example, that Musk was "raised and nourished" by NASA (independently or with the support of the Pentagon), creating a competitor to the largest aerospace giants of today Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which, from the point of view of a number of experts, "got drunk and bite off budget pie is too fatty pieces, inadequate to the benefits brought. "

The first launch of the Falcon Heavy super-heavy rocket

What is the main technical achievement of the Falcon rocket developers?

Ivan Moiseev : I would outline two main achievements, they are a bit diverse.

The first is that they, at the stage of development of the future Falcon 9 rocket, adapted it to the requirements of the market. In particular, they used simple open circuit motors. In them, the generator gas that rotates the turbo pumps is simply discharged, and not fed into the combustion chamber, where it could create additional thrust.

These motors are considered obsolete and less efficient than those with a closed circuit. But since they turned out to be cheaper, simpler, SpaceX won a lot on this.

Second, they developed a return stage. This is SpaceX's own initiative, it was not done using funds from contracts with NASA, but this allows the company to save quite a lot on launches - up to 20-25 percent.

Igor Afanasiev: There are several real achievements.

First: creation, mass production and the operation of a two-stage medium / heavy launch vehicle with the highest design efficiency to date without the use of oxygen-hydrogen fuel. In terms of the number of stages and the ratio of the payload mass to the launch mass, the Falcon 9 is more efficient than such carrier rockets of a similar class, such as Ariane-5, Changzheng-5, Zenit, Proton, and the like.

Second: working out the landing technology and the first stages of multiple use of the most expensive and usually lost element of the rocket and space transport system - the multi-engine first stage. If the declared characteristics are confirmed, this may become a trend in modern rocket and space technology.

Third: an exceptionally high launch rate (not typical for American launch vehicles of the 2010s) and good cost indicators, which allowed them to conquer a significant share of the launch market by squeezing out (or significantly dampening their ardor) traditional players with their technology-based launch vehicles 1960-1980s.

Landing of Falcon Heavy side boosters

Will reusing the first stages of SpaceX rockets really be cost-effective?

Ivan Moiseev : It seems to me very doubtful the promises that the used first stages will be able, upon return, immediately, almost without preparation, to go back into space. Serious checks, tests, preparation for a new launch will still be needed. SpaceX can, of course, reduce the cost of this, but there are fundamental things that cannot be reduced.

But the fact is that reducing the launch cost by even 25 percent for the rocket industry is a lot, this is a very good indicator. If it is possible, say, to reduce the price by one percent - this is already serious money, because launches cost millions of dollars, and then immediately 25. And Elon Musk made a revolution in a sense, because the inertia of the developers' thinking forced them to make the most efficient engines and not very take care of the fate of the step. And he did the opposite and achieved the result.

Igor Afanasiev: Multiple use of the first steps has already been established. True, so far this process is reduced to a two-fold use of rocket blocks (but soon we are promised something more, with the help of the latest version of the Falcon 9 Block 5 carrier). Has this resulted in real cost savings? It is difficult to say - the company (like most launch providers) does not give specific "price tags", you either have to take Musk's word for it, or "figure it out" using the proportions previously indicated by SpaceX officials.

If we assume that the first stage costs 60-80 percent of the entire two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, then when it is used twice (excluding inter-flight service), the launch costs are 60-70 percent of the cost of a similar one-time rocket, with three times - 47-60 percent. The goal of Musk's engineers is to reduce costs by orders of magnitude. It will be extremely difficult to do this, taking into account the inevitable appearance during multiple launches of the above-mentioned costs of inter-launch operations, including the repair of worn-out mechanisms, the restoration of thermal protection sections lost during the entry into the atmosphere, the removal of soot from propulsion systems, etc. By the way, during the operation of the Space Shuttle system, these costs turned out to be much higher than the developers had expected ...

The alleged appearance of the super-heavy rocket BFR

How realistic is the 150-ton BFR missile project?

Ivan Moiseev : This rocket will remain on paper, like the previous project - the Martian transporter. The fact is that there is no customer for it. The development of a rocket of this class, the class of the Saturn V super-heavy lunar rocket, costs tens of billions of dollars, even if the economy is very large. The creation of its counterpart, the SLS missile, has already spent $ 30 billion.

SpaceX does not have that kind of money, and there is no other customer for this rocket, because NASA in its interplanetary projects is guided by the use of its own SLS rocket. No customer - no rocket.

Igor Afanasiev: The BFR project is no larger than the Saturn V that has flown for half a century, and in terms of launch weight it is lighter than the Soviet Vulcan launch vehicle, which was supposed to be created on the basis of Energia. The Raptor oxygen-methane engines for BFR are close in size to those on the Soviet N-1 lunar rocket NK-33 Kuznetsov. Analysts note that the financial side of the project is no longer as hopeless as it used to be and does not cause persistent rejection from potential investors. It is possible that in a certain scenario, NASA will be interested in the project, because one of the goals of BFR is to replace the Dragon spacecraft serving the ISS.

Leaving aside the economics of the project, we can say that, in general, there are no special doubts about the feasibility of BFR (as practice shows, almost any formulated engineering problem that does not contradict the laws of mechanics can be solved). But many questions remain, both to the whole concept in general and to the details in particular. It is still difficult to achieve the inherent indicators of the perfection of the steps. It is not known what to do with the acoustic loads, which for the first stage of the BFR are almost twice as high as they were on the Saturn. The increased acoustics forces the structure to be reinforced, making it heavier. Skeptics note the utopian nature of the idea of ​​a “universal system capable of landing on the Earth, the Moon and Mars, as well as on all the others. celestial bodies", As Musk declares. There are very big doubts about the possibility of carrying out "conveyor launches" - and for the future colonization of Mars, thousands of launches are needed a year!

Many questions are raised by the planned operation of the system, which provides for a minimum of repair and restoration work after BFR flights, or a complete refusal of them and even from maintenance. Meanwhile, until now, unattended equipment (sledgehammers, axes and other equipment is not considered) no one has managed to sell - even cars (not to mention airplanes) undergo regular maintenance. It is completely unclear how to create an unrepairable rocket aircraft subject to much higher loads?

It is unclear how the issue of emergency rescue of the BFR crew and passengers during an abnormal launch is resolved. Musk reduces everything to an analogy with passenger aviation, where neither the crew nor the passengers have a means of rescue in emergency and disastrous situations... If desired, one can find a rational grain in these arguments, but one must take into account that "the history of aviation written in blood" is more than 100 years old, while not a single interplanetary passenger flight has yet been performed (professionals flew to the moon, and for them the risk was everyday phenomenon), therefore, the spread of aviation experience and criteria for long-distance space flights seems to be ill-founded.

Ivan Moiseev : This is pure fantasy. First, who will be the customer for this project? This customer should have money not only for a super-heavy rocket, but also for a ship, and for the entire infrastructure, for the constant supply of this base. In order to land only two astronauts on Mars and return them back (and Musk, let me remind you, plans to send hundreds of people), according to some estimates, $ 500 billion is needed. The largest customer in this area is NASA, with a budget of $ 20 billion a year. That is, if NASA deals only with Mars and nothing else, then it will take 25 years to implement this project.

Therefore, all this talk about Mars will remain just talk. As soon as they begin to count money and ask “who will pay?”, It immediately becomes clear that there is no one to pay. In addition, the automata work quite well, they transmit a lot of information from Mars, therefore, in scientific terms, a manned expedition will not be justified. What's the point in a habitable base if the rover can drive and gather information for years?

Igor Afanasiev: There are too many “ifs” here ... If the BFR project gets stuck, if Musk finds the necessary money, if the missile's flight tests go on at the intended pace, and so on. But judging by how long SpaceX's vast program has been dragging on compared to previously published plans, most likely not.

But this is natural: in astronautics, each subsequent step is given much harder than the previous one, as if climbing a staircase with an ever-increasing steepness. Building a giant rocket the size of a BFR is a big step, sending people to Mars is a huge step, and building a base, and even by the end of the next decade, seems like a utopia. In addition, all the main successes of SpaceX over the past ten years are in one way or another related to solving problems in the interests of government agencies. But NASA plans to land people on Mars (at least at the present time) on its own, although the possibility of connecting "private traders" (count - SpaceX and, possibly, Blue Origin) at some stage of the program cannot be completely ruled out. Most of the technical aspects of the problem seem feasible, although the scale of the development is staggering.

Interviewed by Grigory Kopiev

© CC0

That's when their Falcon 1 flies, then let's talk.

When there is a contract with NASA, then we'll talk.

When they build their ship, then we'll talk.

When they figure out how to land missiles, then we'll talk.

When they put them on the barge, then we'll talk.

You are here.

But "here", of course, does not mean anything. Let's briefly describe this place.

You are on the street of the Thirty Irkutsk division, house 8, apartment 219.

In your house there is a store called "Magnolia", allegedly Moroccan tangerines were brought into it the day before yesterday, but they are not even Abkhazian to taste. You even thought for a minute where it was possible to grow such sourness, but you have no versions.

The neighbor from above is constantly drilling something, the neighbor from below is knocking on the battery. At first you thought that your TV was too loud when you were watching TV series, but then a neighbor woke you up by knocking on the battery at three in the morning, and somehow relieved.

There is serious discussion on TV whether the priest should be responsible for the missile launch failure. Before that, they also seriously discussed what films can be made about the king, but you do not remember what conclusion they came to. Judging by the fact that the mausoleum and the Voykovskaya station are still with us, probably any.

You are here, where the whole world needs to collect money for the treatment of seriously ill patients, and then treat these patients in another country, because here, on the street of the Thirty Irkutsk Division, money does not guarantee anything.

Where presidential elections are so pointless that candidates talk about it openly.

Where your pension savings have been frozen for several years (and you do not understand what it is, but you feel that a good thing will not be called a freeze), and 8.5 billion rubles were found in the colonel's apartment.

You also found money yesterday, two hundred rubles in your winter jacket pocket. At first they were very happy, and then they read about the colonel.

You are here, where a city must go in order to travel. And an amazing thing - after the center was narrowed roadway, there are more traffic jams, who would have thought.

Where dumplings cost six hundred rubles, after all. Yes, in fact, this price does not guarantee anything either, except, of course, that after buying dumplings you will have six hundred rubles less.

Well, that is, taking into account the fact that you have found two hundred, then after buying dumplings you will have minus four hundred rubles. Here this arithmetic does not seem strange, here the laws of history, mathematics and physics behave differently.

Here, which you got, it seems, has expired a little, and everything is possible in it, especially if it all somehow crap to you.

In the morning you look at yourself in the mirror and see above you the fiery letters "not subject to warranty repair."

Surely, of course, there is something good here. But you are here anyway. Not on this list above, but here. You entered the list like this, to visit, to dream.

As for the good stuff, you have to add it yourself. Therefore, in the evening you make strong coffee, watch TV shows for a long time with headphones, seizing them with dumplings in barbecue sauce - even so, they are not very similar to dumplings.

At 2.45 am you get out of the chair. Everything was confused in my head from lack of sleep and TV shows, Flash again saved the planet and dined on pseudo-dumplings.

You pick up a hammer and go to the battery. At first you rarely knock, waiting for the echo to die down, then more and more often. The neighbor from below responds first, but gradually the rest are connected to it. By three in the morning the whole house is singing.

You put the hammer aside and go to the outlet.

“You are here,” you shout into the outlet.

“We are here,” you shout into the ventilation.

- I'm here! - you shout through the open window, so that the windows in the next house will also light up.

When the device is launched to the Moon, then we'll talk.

When he lands on Mars, then we'll talk.