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Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

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Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#71
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an AI crypto scam channel. Musk is so scammy that it looked feasible and was shared widely by the looks.

[flagged]

I watched it on Twitter. Two idiots sent me the crypto scam link separately.

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#74
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who cares... they did it and it didn't burn up or destroy the platform. rest is just nitpicking

Outside of maybe Boeing "who cares..." isn't a valid answer in engineering.

[flagged]

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#75

I'm just so happy to see this level of progress. This another big step for opening up space. To think that one day this will be considered normal. 150 Metric tons sent on a fully reusable rocket. Thats like a 747 to space.

Is that 150t of payload or total? What’s the cost in fuel alone (let’s ignore maintenance and operations costs for now)? I’m trying to get a feel for the relative scale compared to today’s commercial flight.

Methane is about 900-1500$ / ton. About 1000 tons is used for the launch in addition to 3600 tons of lox. That should be a bit cheaper than methane per ton. Ballpark, the propellant might cost around 2M$.

A modern airliner on a long flight might burn around 80 tons of kerosene. It's slightly cheaper than methane. Call it 75-80K$.

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#76

I'm just so happy to see this level of progress. This another big step for opening up space. To think that one day this will be considered normal. 150 Metric tons sent on a fully reusable rocket. Thats like a 747 to space.

So, reusable is supposed to reduce the cost. But the space shuttle was reusable and it has been shutdown because it was too expensive. What is the differences between the two?

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#79
post #17

Video of the catch > Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster! https://x.com/spacex/status/1845442658397049011

I wonder what will happen when they get to 99% reliability? They clean up and rebuild the Mechazilla every once a hundred catches, on that occasion that one fails?

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#80
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who cares... they did it and it didn't burn up or destroy the platform. rest is just nitpicking

Outside of maybe Boeing "who cares..." isn't a valid answer in engineering.

It's a prototype.
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