Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 187 posts

Re: The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

#51

Post by mlindner »

ChickeNES wrote: post #15

The license itself: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as... As someone who has been waiting since the ITS presentation in 2016, I've very excited :) Edit: they reuploaded with additional info: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...

I've been following it since even before that point when it was still called the "MCT", but without any explanation of what the acronym meant. A long time coming. This is the beginning of a new era in space exploration.

Re: The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

#52

Post by skykooler »

Aeolun wrote: post #45
olex wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to build a second tower with catch arms there. The booster does not have landing legs and will not touch down on the ground, the plan is to have it settle on the same "tower arms" that are used as a crane to stack the booster and the ship for launch, with engines still well above ground.

They managed landing legs and they decided to up the level of difficulty a few notches or something?

Pretty much. Catching it with the launch tower means in theory you can have much faster turnaround between flights, since you don't need to transport it from the landing site to the launch site.

Re: The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

#53

Post by antoniuschan99 »

mhandley wrote: post #44
ralfd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly after this Methan explosion 9 month ago they got more cautious and slower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjbjXTomxqI

And they also have previous painful experience of destroying a Falcon 9 pad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ Really can't afford to repeat that if they are to make the timeline for using Starship as NASA's next lunar lander.

How much does Mechazilla cost? I read it's 1 billion. Also news is Elon said destroying nearby infrastructure would be a 9 month setback at the least.

Re: The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

#55

Post by philwelch »

chasd00 wrote: post #47
00F_ wrote: post #18

i was at south padre island for the first starship landing. even though it blew up a minute or two after it landed, i consider it the first landing. i had seen pretty much every major launch from spacex on their livestreams but i was still taken aback at seeing starship. its as odd as watching a skyscraper slowly levitate upward into the sky. and to see it standing after the dust settled was unreal. and after it was…

I wonder if you could head over to Matamoros and give a fisherman $50 to take you out on the water. The launch tower is maybe 500yds from the beach.

Probably a bad idea. Rocket launches tend to have exclusion zones for sea traffic and they will scrub the launch if some boat wanders into the area, and speaking as someone who likes to watch rocket launches on stream, I’m confident in saying that lots of people will be mad at you for doing this.

Edit: Oh, you said Matamoros, which is in Mexico and presumably out of the FAA's jurisdiction. Everyday Astronaut seems to think Matamoros is one of the more dangerous parts of Mexico[1] but I'm not one to talk anyone out of adventure travel. Just be wise to what you're getting yourself into.[2]

[1] https://everydayastronaut.com/how-to-visit-starbase [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/mexican-cartel-says-sorry-a...

Re: The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

#56

Post by oh_sigh »

reaperducer wrote: post #14

Tragically off-topic, but following the link I see that SpaceX has an online shop. The shop sells a SpaceX sticker pack, and one of the stickers looks like a bunch of cats in a satellite dish. I'm not a SpaceX follower, so can someone who is explain what it means: https://shop.spacex.com/collections/featured-products/produc...

There was a meme when the Starlink beta was going on that people's cats were messing up their internet because they were snuggling up to the antenna

Re: The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

#57

Post by grishka »

mlindner wrote: post #51
ChickeNES wrote: post #15

The license itself: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as... As someone who has been waiting since the ITS presentation in 2016, I've very excited :) Edit: they reuploaded with additional info: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...

I've been following it since even before that point when it was still called the "MCT", but without any explanation of what the acronym meant. A long time coming. This is the beginning of a new era in space exploration.

I remember it being called BFR, which stood for Big F**ing Rocket, lol

Re: The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

#58

Post by mlindner »

chasd00 wrote: post #47
00F_ wrote: post #18

i was at south padre island for the first starship landing. even though it blew up a minute or two after it landed, i consider it the first landing. i had seen pretty much every major launch from spacex on their livestreams but i was still taken aback at seeing starship. its as odd as watching a skyscraper slowly levitate upward into the sky. and to see it standing after the dust settled was unreal. and after it was…

I wonder if you could head over to Matamoros and give a fisherman $50 to take you out on the water. The launch tower is maybe 500yds from the beach.

That area is restricted during launch. If you head out there you'd end up canceling/delaying the launch. https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/16470015572111605...

Re: The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

#59

Post by stetrain »

chasd00 wrote: post #47
00F_ wrote: post #18

i was at south padre island for the first starship landing. even though it blew up a minute or two after it landed, i consider it the first landing. i had seen pretty much every major launch from spacex on their livestreams but i was still taken aback at seeing starship. its as odd as watching a skyscraper slowly levitate upward into the sky. and to see it standing after the dust settled was unreal. and after it was…

I wonder if you could head over to Matamoros and give a fisherman $50 to take you out on the water. The launch tower is maybe 500yds from the beach.

There is a marine exclusion zone:

https://twitter.com/VisitBocaChica/status/164693832218955776...

Re: The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

#60

Post by mlindner »

grishka wrote: post #57
mlindner wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following it since even before that point when it was still called the "MCT", but without any explanation of what the acronym meant. A long time coming. This is the beginning of a new era in space exploration.

I remember it being called BFR, which stood for Big F**ing Rocket, lol

That came later after the MCT and then ITS acronyms. There's a history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship_development
Post reply on HN