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SpaceX stacks giant Starship rocket ahead of 2nd test flight
SpaceX's giant Starship rocket is ready for its second-ever test flight.
SpaceX stacked its latest Starship vehicle on Tuesday (Sept. 5), lifting the Ship 25 upper-stage prototype onto the Booster 9 "Super Heavy" first stage at the company's Starbase site in South Texas.
The work represents a major milestone ahead of an impending test flight, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk says can happen whenever the required regulatory boxes get checked.
"Starship is ready to launch, awaiting FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] license approval," Musk wrote Tuesday in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) that included a 40-second video capturing highlights of the stacking process.
Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, is still in development. SpaceX envisions the fully reusable vehicle eventually taking over pretty much all of its spaceflight duties, from launching satellites to Earth orbit to sending people to the moon and Mars.
A fully stacked Starship has flown just once to date — in April of this year, on a test flight from Starbase that aimed to send the upper stage partway around Earth, with a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
That vehicle suffered several problems shortly after launch, however, including the failure of its first and second stages to separate. As a result, SpaceX beamed up a self-destruct command, detonating the craft high above the Gulf of Mexico four minutes after liftoff.
SpaceX has made a number of changes to this second Starship vehicle. Perhaps the most prominent is the switch to a "hot staging" strategy, in which the upper stage lights its engines before it has fully separated from the first-stage booster. That switch required modifications to Booster 9, including the installation of a heat shield and a "vented interstage" to protect it from Ship 25's fire.
SpaceX has been gearing up for the second flight, whose goals will be similar to those of the first, for a while now. For example, the company has performed two "static fires" with Booster 9, briefly igniting the vehicle's Raptor engines while it remained anchored to Starbase's orbital launch mount.
Those two tests occurred on Aug. 6 and Aug. 25. The second one was a marked improvement; all 33 of Booster 9's Raptors lit up, compared to 29 during the first static fire, according to SpaceX.
But there's more to Starship's flight readiness than technical progress, as Musk noted in his social media post: The FAA still hasn't granted a launch license for this second liftoff.
The agency is still reviewing the mishap report that SpaceX filed about the April 20 flight, which damaged Starbase's orbital launch mount and sent dirt, chunks of concrete and other debris raining down on the area around the site.
注释：
envision: v
表示" 想象；设想"，means "imagine; conceive of; see in one's mind"，如：I can't envision him doing such a terrible thing.我不敢想象他能做出这种可怕的事。
splashdown: n
表示" 在海中降落"，means "a landing of a spacecraft in the sea at the end of a space flight"，如：Splashdown is scheduled for 0500 hours. 在海中降落时间定在早晨5点整。
detonate: v
表示"爆炸;使爆炸；使爆裂；"，means "cause to burst with a violent release of energy;"，如：An engineer tried to detonate the mine. 一名工程师试图引爆地雷。
vent: v
表示" 发泄；表达；排放"，means "give expression or utterance to"，如：I look down on man who vents his anger on his family after having a bad day at work. 我瞧不起那些工作不顺心就拿家里人出气的男人。
interstage: adj
表示" 级间的"，如：The interstage annealing procedure was reduced and the production efficiency wa... 减少了中间退火工序,生产效率大大提高。
Raptor: n
表示"猛禽；肉食鸟"，means "any of numerous carnivorous birds that hunt and kill other animals"，如：They want to know how the Raptor flies.他们想知道猛禽是如何飞行的。
mishap: n
表示"灾祸；恶运"，means "an unpredictable outcome that is unfortunate"，如：Many species will be dwarfed due to this mishap. 许多物种都因这一灾祸而发育不良。
中文简要说明：
SpaceX在德州的太空基地再次忙碌起来，有史以来最大型的太空火箭「星舰系统」名为Ship 25的星舰(Starship)上级段，与名为Booster 9的「超重型」(Super Heavy)已完成组装，准备第2次试射，就等联邦航管局(FAA)的同意。
太空网(Space.com)报导，SpaceX执行长马斯克(Elon Musk)在X(也就是推特)上表示：「星舰已准备好发射，只等待 FAA的同意许可批准。」随文字附上的40秒影片是巨大火箭组装的缩时过程。
今年四月，星舰火箭首次试射，原计划是环绕地球1周，然后在夏威夷附近的海域返回。然而，首枚星舰在发射后不久就遇到了问题，底部的33具引擎并没有全部启动，推力不足的结果使第一级和第二级不能分离。在发射的4分钟，火箭翻滚一周之后， SpaceX控制中心发出了自毁指令，在墨西哥湾上空炸成火球。
经过检讨，SpaceX进行了多项修正，包括加装导焰沟与减震注水系统，而火箭本身也做了改良，第二级的星舰段有「热分离」的方式，也就是星际与第一级完全分离之前，可以先点燃引擎。这一改变需要对 超重型火箭的顶部加装隔热罩与导焰口，以保护它不会被星舰给烧毁。
在过去一个月， Booster 9超重型火箭进行了两次引擎点火测试，改善了一些小问题。8月6日点火测试时，只有29具引擎成功点火；到了8月25日二度测试时， 33具引擎终于都成功喷射。
但正如马斯克所说的，现在等待的就是FAA的第二次发射的发射许可证。他们必须证明先前的错误与问题不会再犯。当地有许多人反对火箭发射，包括居民与环保团体。
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