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Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

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Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#301

Post by hagbard_c »

ceejayoz wrote: post #208
hagbard_c wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd, I think Musk is doing quite well with 'Twitter'. It is a very good thing that the ideological censorship which the Ancienne Regime at Twitter was guilty of has been lifted, especially in the light of the oncoming elections in Europe/the US and the current mess in Brazil etc. It is clear as daylight that those who are ideologically aligned with the previous regime at Twitter are annoyed that their playground has…

> You don't have to like what the opposition says but you should allow them to speak... Then we're in a agreement that Musk's arbitrary bans ( https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/elon-musk-twitter-st... / https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n... ) are bad. I'm glad!

Musk is not perfect but compared to the way the previous leadership handled the ban hammer he's doing quite well. I hope he ends up leaving TwiXXer in capable hands who take freedom of expression seriously and who are on the level with regard to policies and supposed violations of such. Who do not allow themselves to be used by governments to circumvent their own laws with regard to the suppression of speech. Who follow the law of the land, not the feelings of a few noisy extremists. I'd rather have people like Musk focus on projects like SpaceX but I see it as a net positive that he wrested control of 'the public square' away from ideologues who had turned it into the 'Red Square'. May it end up like (my possibly idealised idea of) Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park where anyone can put down a soapbox, climb on it and say what's on his mind as long as he stays within the bounds set by law. If what he says makes sense he'll mostly get applause plus a few boos and jeers, it it doesn't he'll get pelted with rotten tomatoes.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#302

Post by dotnet00 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #41
mannyv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess they didn't want to sacrifice "Of Course I Still Love You" for this test.

Of course I still love you is not even close to large enough to catch this booster, is it?

I think technically it's just barely large enough to fit, but, the booster isn't designed to land like that, it's supposed to be caught from the top by a tower. So, the Raptors would probably burn a hole through the barge trying to land on it.

The eventual plan was to catch these with towers on modified oil rigs, then refuel and relaunch from there. But that has been put aside for now, there's so much land infrastructure to focus on.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#303

Post by insane_dreamer »

badnews2u wrote: post #49
insane_dreamer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX doing amazing work and Musk being an egomaniacal $hole are not mutually exclusive

being a hypocritical "nice guy" and innovation are incompatible

I strongly disagree with that take. Pushing the envelope does not require treating others like &hit. Also, there are degrees of "niceness", it's not a binary state.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#304

Post by avmich »

The 4th Starship test flight was absolutely great test, which really pushed the state of the art - both in general (after all, Starship 2nd stage is 1.5-2 times heavier - when empty - than a Space Shuttle returning from orbit) and specifically for developing the Starship as a robust launch system.

Regarding return from orbital (and above) velocities - there was a flight ( https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/irdt-fregat.htm ) in 2000 when the payload was returning from orbit using inflatable heat shield, which would tolerate much less of heat flow than Starship. The approach was to dissipate a lot of energy in high enough atmosphere, so that while temperature (measure of gas molecules kinetic energy) is high, the heat flow (amount of gas molecules with that kind of high energy to the ship) is low and so heat effects on the ship are also low.

Another approach was used e.g. in Zond-6 flight ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_6 ) when the spacecraft entered the atmosphere, shed some speed and got heated, then ballistically exited the dense atmosphere layers, cooled down a bit, then got into atmosphere again with less speed and so less heat load.

The point is we still have some tricks up our sleeve to fight the problems of atmospheric reentry.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#305

Post by marmakoide »

world2vec wrote: post #254

Seeing the Starship's flap visibly burning in the reentry heat and still survive well enough to move around and get to a splashdown was just incredible. Amazing progress in just four test flights.

That flap is already a legend, kept at it even mangled by hot plasma, crazy accelerations and pressures, spitting molten steel at the camera. What a role model, the little flap that could.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#306

Post by DarmokJalad1701 »

liuliu wrote: post #291

How come the stream not cutting off during re-entry "blackout" period? Is it because the re-entry is low / slow enough so no thick plasma layer, or because it is streamed through StarLink which happens to be on the other side of the plasma layer?

There is a "hole" in the plasma in the wake of the re-entering Starship due to its shape. They used Starlink terminals to beam the data up to Starlink satellites. Starlink also uses higher frequency signals than older systems and that also helps.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#307

Post by gpm »

world2vec wrote: post #254

Seeing the Starship's flap visibly burning in the reentry heat and still survive well enough to move around and get to a splashdown was just incredible. Amazing progress in just four test flights.

Also lost an engine at startup and another engine during the landing burn on the booster. Judging by the debris maybe a third engine during landing burn shutdown (or maybe that was the second engine just exploding a bit more).

Still a successful test, still a lot of work to do before they can meet their promises for Artemis (which require >10 back to back launches for one lunar mission...)

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#308

Post by spdif899 »

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #306
liuliu wrote: post #291

How come the stream not cutting off during re-entry "blackout" period? Is it because the re-entry is low / slow enough so no thick plasma layer, or because it is streamed through StarLink which happens to be on the other side of the plasma layer?

There is a "hole" in the plasma in the wake of the re-entering Starship due to its shape. They used Starlink terminals to beam the data up to Starlink satellites. Starlink also uses higher frequency signals than older systems and that also helps.

I'm not sure if they have shared details but I assume this leaves a relatively narrow window over the ship that they need to put a satellite, which would be really cool to see more on logistically.

Like how do you move a satellite or satellites to a certain area, at the right time, avoiding other space objects, and then keep them there for 45 minutes during the mission or at least 15 minutes during the blackout zone. I'm sure it takes a huge amount of planning, math, coordination with various entities....

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#309

Post by shamefulkiwi »

admissionsguy wrote: post #93
thebiglebrewski wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the other 10K+ people who did the actual work to make this happen? Or is it all about that one guy? :)

If not for Musk, they would be working at Boeing, Blue Origin and such...

Would they? If not for the audacious decision to attempt to land an orbital booster with F9 and the public display of the failures that led to the inspirational success of the first landing, how many of those brilliant young engineers would have decided to pursue a career in a boring and tired space industry?

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#310

Post by rtkwe »

rtkwe wrote: post #106
bluescrn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could however mock one up, either with just a big concrete pad or with a pad and tower, and the booster "return to launch site" and prove it can hover in a specific location long enough for the chopsticks to close to get a very low risk approximate test.
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