Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funnily enough, the Simpsons did it: https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Inanimate_carbon_rod
I’ll show you inanimate!
Just noticed the name.
Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
461–470 of 899 posts
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#462So 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…
Here's where things get really counter-intuitive. If Starship lives up to even a fraction of its potential, it's likely Falcon 9 will be completely retired, because Starship will cost less to launch! The entire point of the Starship is complete and instantaneous reuse. The idea is to have it launching something up, landing right back into its launch pad slot, and then going again. The ridiculous cost saving potential is what makes all of this so much more revolutionary than most realize.
This isn't just a new big rocket. This is the most powerful rocket ever built, with the goal of launching it for less than the cheapest rockets cost. The current goal is to aim for $10 million within a few years, and then keep pushing it lower. For contrast, a Falcon 9 currently costs about $67 million to send 18 tons to orbit. Rocket Lab's Electron micro-rocket costs $7.5 million to send 0.3 tons to orbit. Starship can deliver 150 tons to orbit, a number that is planned to increase substantially.
The thing about space is that the potential is infinite, but it only becomes possible to start doing stuff once you get launch costs really low. Falcon 9 has brought launch costs down by orders of magnitude, but most people don't even realize this because unless you're a giant telecoms company or something, then $2000/kg doesn't sound that different than $50,000/kg --- wayyyyy too expensive for anything. But now imagine a world where you could launch things for $10/kg. Suddenly the entire universe opens up to expansion and exploitation, and life as we know it would basically change overnight.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#463What 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…
So, speed of reentry is directly a consequence of surface area (or energy expended by fuel to counter, in the case of the booster which does not use friction with the atmosphere to slow down) of one side. You'll produce the same amount of heat (and sound, light, but let's keep the model simple so we can understand better) no matter how fast you come in and no matter how wide your surface area is (assuming the same mass), it's just the thermal properties of the material and the surrounding environment dictate how quickly that heat dissipates, and the surface area determines how distributed the heat is, and the speed it's entering determines how quickly the heat is generated.
So to slow down more evenly and have less heat at the max point per square inch, you need wider surface area (or you need to expend fuel firing engines in the opposite direction of travel, what both parts do at the end to slow to 0, and a problem due to the rocket equation, fuel has mass and so increases the amount of kinetic energy you must dissipate), and that means more mass and more engineering and a bigger vehicle. The goal ultimately is of course optimizing all these variables.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You should not use the fact your own side has done terrible things as an excuse for others to do similar things.
Feel free to be outraged no matter who it is.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it’s hard to comprehend how powerful those engines are. The booster is relatively light without all the propellant and starship when it’s attempting to land, but it’s still 30 stories tall and I’m assuming it weighs dozens of tons.
It blew my mind that just the fuel pump for just one engine has a power rated in the tens of thousands of horsepower/kW.
Yep, those pumps have to push the propellant into the explosion harder than the explosion pushes back. That takes serious power!
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
The commenter is talking about the 6 month trip to Mars in space, not on the surface.
On that, if you orient the ship so that the rear is pointed directly at the sun (trivial to do once you're coasting) you'll have a hundred feet of liquid fuel and other solid material which will block the primary source of radiation (the sun).
I too, read Project Hail Mary (great book btw).
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#467for context which is often lacking in posts like this, this is what a Super Heavy is (I had to look it up lol because it's not really obvious from the title alone): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Super_Heavy meta but it absolutely would not kill anyone to include some context in your submissions here.
There WAS more context, but some moderator of hacker news merged in the post with more context into this link that was posted first. That erased all the context.
Also the significance is not Super Heavy landing in the Gulf of Mexico, but Starship landing in the Indian Ocean.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#468'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!
A bit more exciting than my standard day at the office! Production outage is about as spicy as it gets…
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#469I kinda feel bad for Boeing. SLS should be docking about now to the ISS, and instead everyone is watching their competition.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve said for a while that we won’t be ready for the real space age until you can have a rusty pickup in space. What I mean by that is that we have it down well enough that the tech exceeds tolerances and can degrade gracefully. You see this in some sci-fi where there are rust bucket old ships that work.
That doesn't work IRL. Space is insanely unforgiving. While Starship has a vastly better chance than STS had of achieving rapid reusability, you really can't launch with a rocket that isn't up to spec because adding robustness adds weight. Unlike a multi-stage expendable rocket, Starship uses all its fuel to get to orbit. To go to the moon or beyond, it requires refueling by several other Starships that also just get…
There's a difference between getting to space and being in space.
A true space age will involve many ships that never enter atmosphere or land.