'The little flap that could'...
Watching the stream and hearing the excitement of the whole team in the background honestly made me tear up a little. Congratulations!
Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
101–110 of 899 posts
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#102Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#103So I'm excited to see this tech develop but I wonder how much of a market there really is for super-heavy lifters. I can't wait to see a future version where they land the various stages rather than just dumping them into the sea. The first Falcon Heavy launch was super impressive. SpaceX already has the Falcon Heavy and there have only been a handful of launches, primarily military. I guess the argument is it'll ope…
Payloads are designed according to available spacecraft capabilities.
When this thing flies, market will form around it in no time.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#104Watching pieces of the ship melt off, but then seeing it make a relatively controlled landing, is perversely confidence building. If it can survive that kind of damage on a control surface maybe it's a quite robust craft.
Yeah, and what a useful recording for "where do we buff up the heat protection?"
Survivorship bias!
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#105Reminds me of playing Lunar Lander[1] back in the day.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_(video_game_genre...
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that might be a second IFT away personally: I imagine they'd like to see no engine relight issues on descent for at least one more mission first, since slamming it into Starbase would be a shame.
It does seem like they could do with a more isolated launch site (with the tank farm in a huge concrete bunker) before trying to catch Super Heavy
They'd have to build the whole launch complex again which makes me doubt they'd do it.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#107What the hell, half melted starship actually did the landing flip and hit the ocean slow!!! That was amazing!
Absolutely beautiful! The hypersonic plasma flow was like no footage I've seen!
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#108Holy shit, that was incredible. One of the fins burned half away and still managed to control for a soft splashdown. https://imgur.com/a/zNXUjbt
It was crazy seeing that thing show back up in the camera
Sometimes the test works and it's exciting, sometimes it goes wrong and suddenly I'm hugely invested in the drama of a stainless steel aerodynamic control surface.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#109So I'm excited to see this tech develop but I wonder how much of a market there really is for super-heavy lifters. I can't wait to see a future version where they land the various stages rather than just dumping them into the sea. The first Falcon Heavy launch was super impressive. SpaceX already has the Falcon Heavy and there have only been a handful of launches, primarily military. I guess the argument is it'll ope…
Yes, there won't be as many customers purchasing 150-200 tons of lift, but that's the point of "rideshares". All that really matters with space launches is the cost per kg and if it's capable of lifting multiple payloads into multiple orbits, it'll have 10-15 customers per lift, not one. The current model has a kind of pez-dispenser but for chucking out multiple payloads. There are purchasers for the full lift capaci…
If you think about this, it doesn't make a lot of sense because different satellites are going to sit in very different orbits.
Geosynchronous satellites are an obvious case where satellites will collect into a limited number of orbits but they vary on what point of the Earth they sit over. Also getting to geostationary orbit takes a lot more fuel so the rocket has less room for payload than, say, low EArth orbit. I'm not sure one rocket can launch a geostationary satellite above the Americas and above Europe in the same mission.
But you can't really launch a satellite in a polar orbit and an equatorial orbit in the same mission, for example. Likewise, how economic is it to deploy one at 150km and another at 250km?
Starlink is a special case because it's a related constellation of satellites where a number of satellites are in the same orbit.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#110Here is a reminder that the only other rocket that can survive re-entry is Falcon 9.
Now we have the 2nd!