Elon Musk’s dream of going to Mars could take a big leap forward in the coming months, when his company SpaceX tries to put its Starship aircraft into orbit for the first time. It will be the most powerful rocket ever launched into orbit, capable of generating more than twice the thrust energy of the Saturn V rocket that carried astronauts to the Moon half a century ago.
SpaceX has managed several suborbital test flights, and Musk expects the first orbital flight , to be made by Starship SN20, in February. “There’s a lot of risk associated with this first launch, so I wouldn’t say it’s likely to be successful, but we’ll make a lot of progress,” Musk told a forum for space scientists last November.
back to space
The vehicle is a two-stage rocket, the lower part is a powerful booster called Super Heavy, on the upper part is a 50-meter-high spaceship called Starship; Put all in a row, the complex exceeds 120 meters in height, like a 30-storey building. SpaceX has developed its own engine called the Raptor and 29 of them will power the Super Heavy, while the Starship aircraft will have six engines. That propulsion power will allow it to carry up to 100 tons of cargo into space.
chips are still missing
If you’ve had to wait a long time for your new car or PlayStation , then you’ve experienced the hardest part of a global microchip and semiconductor shortage in recent history.
This shortage has been a major frustration for the tech industry throughout 2021, and is expected to continue into 2022. The pandemic has disrupted computer chip production and caused shipping problems. Meanwhile, some electronics companies closed production lines that were only marginally profitable. At the same time, however, the demand for devices that include these microchips increased as consumers, confined at home due to restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, bought electronic devices.
The combination has created severe shortages, and analysts say there is no immediate solution. The balance between supply and demand will probably not be restored any time soon, probably until well into 2022. Companies are spending a lot of money to meet demand, but it takes a long time to get new production lines up and running.
Even as microchip makers catch up with demand, it will take perhaps another two or three months for auto and electronics makers to ramp up production to pre-crisis pace.
This shortage of semiconductors and microchips is making production totally unpredictable for many industries, with delivery delays of several months being experienced, and electronics becoming more expensive due to enormous problems in being able to meet all the demand at a planetary level.
