I always get chills hearing the live viewing audience just losing their minds during these recordings. Must be an incredible feeling to be a part of such a massive accomplishment.
Reminds me of the "We Stand Tall" Scientology video.
Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
701–710 of 899 posts
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#702About landing the Super Heavy booster, Wiki[1] says: > [S]hortly before landing,[67] it ignites its engines to slow sufficiently to be caught by two mechanical arms attached to the tower. Does anyone know the reason to choose "two mechanical arms", instead of landing like the Falcon 9? And has SpaceX announced any plans to test these arms? In my mind, it sounds more wild to try to "catch" the landing booster with arm…
Weight savings and less complicated rocket without the legs makes for higher payload capacity.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#703As I recall, the spaceships in the -movies- gently lowered themselves onto the land, or even into a porthole, on a well-formed plume of flame. Without flaps! So watching these images of things flapping and flailing and sputtering causes mental discordance.
I recall that going through atmosphere was always the most shaking moment. With some creaking from time to time and having to hold your steering instruments really tight.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#704Earlier 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.
This is unlikely. We don't really do this on airplanes, where servicing procedures and airworthiness criteria are very strict, and space is orders of magnitude more unforgiving than flying in the atmosphere at ~10km altitude. If there's cabin decompression on a plane, you get an oxygen mask and land safely in the nearest airport. If there's cabin decompression on a spacecraft, you're dead. If there's a problem with e…
I'm working on my PPL at the moment, and I found some pretty fascinating facts about certifications. Apparently there's a very very sharp divide between anything that can be constructed as "commercial" flight, aka somebody pays you to take them for a flight, and non-commercial, i.e. it's just you and maybe your friends. The former category has some pretty solid regulations like, for example, a continuous chain of service history. Once you decide a plane is no longer commercial, you can skip that, and it suddenly becomes less regulated than even your average car.
There are rust buckets flying out there without any issue. There's a guy on tiktok that bought a literal $200 plane and is documenting his work on it - and he started test flying it almost immediately.
I don't have enough experience in the field to tell myself if aviation tech is mature enough to be considered "rusty truck level", but we definitely have the data to know it.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#705About landing the Super Heavy booster, Wiki[1] says: > [S]hortly before landing,[67] it ignites its engines to slow sufficiently to be caught by two mechanical arms attached to the tower. Does anyone know the reason to choose "two mechanical arms", instead of landing like the Falcon 9? And has SpaceX announced any plans to test these arms? In my mind, it sounds more wild to try to "catch" the landing booster with arm…
They were originally trying to land on pad, but they couldn't get legs light enough and strong enough not to bend while landing, there were also problems with maintaining structure around those legs. It was simpler to have two hardpoints and legs be more massive but on the ground.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's the full-sized pic: https://rare-gallery.com/mocahbig/1305111-SpaceX-Starship-Bl...
I was going to say... who took the picture but nowadays it can be a drone.
I was pondering but given the guys in the picture are on cherry picker type cranes, I'm guessing the photographer was on another of those. The quality looks a bit high for a drone.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#707The 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…
What is even more impressive to me is that they were able to quite reliably stream all this through Starlink. This shows how mature and usable Starlink is. The fact that you can have live internet connection on re-entering space ship - truly the future is here.
Well, yeah it was reliable but with a lot of artifacts
I honestly couldn't make out much of what was being shown at those last moments. And I'm curious why SpaceX didn't have a ship there at the expected landing site to assess the landing (maybe they thought it wouldn't make it)?
It was a great event, surely, but it would have been nice to have a 3rd person view of the landing (you have the diagram at the bottom but it's not the same thing) .
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#708Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fact, they did. Being a sailor was about the most dangerous profession that you could choose, including the military. Until today, some jobs at sea are pretty dangerous. Being a fisherman in Alaskan waters is much more risky than being an (American, not Russian) soldier. People still do it. Which convinces me that people will risk their lives going to Mars, and more than a few of them. Some people are just built t…
People risk their lives for high-risk, high-reward jobs. They don't risk their lives for high-risk, no-Reward explorations.
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Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vast majority of the weight however is oxidizer which you could theoretically eliminate since the rocket is surrounded with various amounts of oxygen depending on launch trajectory. A scramjet power first stage for example could overcome the tyranny of the rocket equation (at least on earth).
Not necessarily as much as you think. The issue is orbital velocity is an absolutely bonkers high velocity. Nothing can even come close to that velocity in the atmosphere. The SR-71, fastest air-breathing aircraft ever flow topped out at around 1/9th of orbital velocity. Yes scramjets could certainly beat that speed, once they are developed but even if that doubles the speed of a SR-71 (which already was pushing the…
A booster stage solves exactly that. I noticed in the launch yesterday that the booster was a hog - it was bigger, but it also had a lot of engines and a lot of work to do, so it burned through its fuel faster. This particular configuration is set up for the separation to happen pretty high, but one can imagine different configurations as well - a bigger ship and a smaller, fuel only booster that works only as long as there's atmosphere.
Or even better - keep the current setup but have a ring of air breathing engines in the booster that work as long as they can.
There's a lot of stuff some extra engineering can do, given enough time and resources. For now, SpaceX is going for the biggest bang for the buck, and they have a very healthy aversion of complicated solutions. But in time, adding a few air breathing engines may become simple enough to be worth it.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#710What the hell, half melted starship actually did the landing flip and hit the ocean slow!!! That was amazing!
The fact that it managed the flip and landing burn means the fuel tanks (i.e. most of the fuselage) must have suffered no burn-through, despite what happened to the front flap. They've obviously got some redesign needed on the thermal protection around the flap hinges, but broadly, the thermal protection system and aerodynamic control during reentry seem to have worked well enough. It's finally starting to feel like…
Impressive the flap actuators held up too!