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

Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 899 posts

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

#391

Post by amanaplanacanal »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #338
tialaramex wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the V2 is a rocket, the V1 is a flying bomb. They're both terror weapons, as actual products they have no direct military value, they exist solely in order to scare the shit out of enemy civilians, but liquid fuelled rockets are an invention with a whole lot of interesting practical applications - the V1 is just a bad idea (unless you have unlimited resources, which the Germans did not, and your goal is to terri…

V2 was of questionable legitimate military utility too. Sure you can hit a target the size of a city, but unlike carpet bombing, the payload isn't enough to guarantee that something specific is destroyed. So you can only use it to randomly harm civilians and maybe every once in a while hit a military target. Compare this with the Western Allies' approach where they also killed and maimed tons of civilians but at leas…

Firebombing whole cities in Europe and Japan is still a black mark in US history. It’s really hard for me to get “holier than thou” on other terror campaigns when I remember that.

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

#392

Post by dotnet00 »

notact wrote: post #217
pixl97 wrote: post #68

What the hell, half melted starship actually did the landing flip and hit the ocean slow!!! That was amazing!

Can someone explain why reentry must be so hellish? The energy gained during the rocket burn into orbit must be bled off during reentry, and that energy is enormous. However, why must reentry occur so quickly? It seems if the descent into the atmosphere was slower, the heat shield would be able to radiate the heat energy away more effectively, thus lowering skin temperatures, and significantly reducing the engineerin…

You need to balance peak heating and heating duration. Shallower reentry means lower peak heating, but higher heating duration. Steeper entry means higher peak heating, but lower heating duration.

The heat shield material can handle a certain amount of heat and a certain maximum temperature before it starts to ablate away, so you're forced to thread the regime where both variables are within its tolerances.

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

#393

Post by BurningFrog »

dotnet00 wrote: post #378
somenameforme wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the odds are that some deep sea salvage group is moving to collect that this very instant (or being contracted for such). If Starship lives up to even a fraction of its potential, that [not so] little guy is going to have some serious historicity.

They had a plane flying in the area shortly after landing, probably to drop some marker for a group to come around and recover the black box. I think they've stopped bothering with preserving the test articles though, in the process of test driven development, they're going to have so many "historic" test articles, that it's kind of pointless.

I'd be really surprised if they didn't have a GPS in the ship.

Which should mean they know where it "landed".

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

#394

Post by lsaferite »

idontwantthis wrote: post #118
ceejayoz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and what a useful recording for "where do we buff up the heat protection?"

It looked like plasma got between the flap and the body. I wonder if that means something broke/melted to allow that, or if the design just allowed it accidentally.

It looked like the flap was starting to glow internally in the middle, right before the burn-through on the hinge point. I wonder if it maybe had a lost tile on the other side that evolved into the burn-through we saw in the video.

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

#395

Post by jaggederest »

notact wrote: post #256
bagels wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would take a tremendous amount of fuel to do what you're imagining, probably to the point of making the craft impossible to build with current technology. Your orbit would have to be high enough to do a burn to cancel your orbital velocity (lots of fuel), then you have to burn against gravity for a slow vertical descent (lots of fuel). The rocket equation says... you'll need a larger craft and more fuel to carry t…

I'm not sure why people are misunderstanding my question as "Why not bring more fuel and burn the rockets in reverse". I am simply asking: why not reenter the atmosphere at a shallower angle, spreading the atmospheric braking friction over a longer period of time, which I'd expect would allow more time for the accumulated heat to radiate away before it becomes catastrophic.

What makes you think they aren't already taking the shallowest possible descent?

Once you start touching the atmosphere, it very quickly becomes deterministic. There are a limited number of descent profiles that actually get you to the ground, and believe it or not, starship as far as I can tell is actually taking a "shallow angle" and spreading the atmospheric braking friction over the largest possible time. A steeper entry would melt every conceivable material

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

#396

Post by dotnet00 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #393
dotnet00 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had a plane flying in the area shortly after landing, probably to drop some marker for a group to come around and recover the black box. I think they've stopped bothering with preserving the test articles though, in the process of test driven development, they're going to have so many "historic" test articles, that it's kind of pointless.

I'd be really surprised if they didn't have a GPS in the ship. Which should mean they know where it "landed".

They still would've been in position to put down a marker, since they had to be prepared for that before they knew they'd be able to maintain telemetry down to the water, and if they're already in position, it doesn't hurt to place the marker anyway.

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

#399

Post by chasd00 »

dcdc123 wrote: post #377
bearjaws wrote: post #3

The rate of descent is absolutely astonishing, 8km -> 1km in 20 seconds, then just hovers above the water. Absolutely incredible work by the SpaceX team. Living in central Florida I cannot wait for the new launch facility to come online. We're going to have lines of spectators into the space coast like we did for the shuttle. If any of you are heading to Disney World you should stop by the NASA Kennedy Visitor Comple…

The Houston center is amazing as well! They have a tour where you get to sit in the guest theater/gallery of the original command room and watch a shortened version of the moon landing with all the controls, monitors, projectors, etc all automated to show what was presented during the original landing.

I think Houston also has the most complete Saturn V too. It's on its side in a shed out back basically.
Post reply on HN