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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]

#141

Post by vardump »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #128
flaburgan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> space shuttle was reusable SpaceX builds vehicles. The Shuttle was “reusable” because they needed a term between the default for transportation capital expenditures ( e.g. trains, planes, cars and ships) and the modified missiles that defined post-War spaceflight. “Reusable” in the Shuttle’s context meant months of specialist overhaul time and the cost of a Falcon 9 launch in SRB booster replacements alone [0]. At…

> Starship should bring those costs below $1000.

It might even bring the costs below $100/kg.

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

#142

Post by chasd00 »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #43
jmyeet wrote: post #6

Stage 1 sucessfully caught. That was pretty incredible. I remember watching the Falcony Heavy launch when both boosters landed in sync. It's hanging pretty high in the air, I assume so the engines do less damage to the pad. One wonders how they're going to get it down. Do the chopsticks lower on the tower?

They'll lower it to the launch mount... the catch arms are effectively a crane. But I wonder if it's more "toasty" than they were expecting? There were some fires going at catch (those look out, at least on external camera views) and the engines are still a bit.... smokey. Don't know if that's normal... or if they were expecting it. My hunch is that they don't put it down for awhile. If there's still an issue were th…

There was a lot of smoke coming out of the bottom after the catch. I was worried about an internal fire but it’s since stopped. The glow from the engine mount on re-entry was amazing. The fire on landing had me worried too I was expecting it to grow but put itself out eventually.

What an amazing morning!

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

#143

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

teractiveodular wrote: post #19

It's difficult to overstate how important the milestone of catching the booster is. Now we have a reusable rocket an order of magnitude larger than anything we've had before, and the cost of kg to orbit just nosedived.

I'm not sure how critical "catching" the booster is to reusability, but it does save weight by not needing legs for landing, and perhaps the booster suffers less stress this way?

Note that the booster is not really being "caught" although this is the word it seems we're stuck with. It's really more like landing on the arms, since it throttles to a hover at that point.

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

#144

Post by Denvercoder9 »

haspok wrote: post #134
credit_guy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference is that this is built by a private corporation who can't afford to throw money away, while the Space Shuttle was build by the government, and moreover it had to fulfill a number of conflicting requirements, and commercial profit was not one of them. But on a more technical level. I think the vertical landing is the main difference. Vertical landing was obviously known and done by NASA, this is how…

Spacex might be a private company, but this project is funded by NASA, meaning the American taxpayer. Approved by a person whose last act was this approval before leaving NASA and joining Spacex (effectively putting money in their own pocket). It is also yet to be seen how Starship will ever be profitable (outside of spending government money), who is going to pay for those launches and for what purpose. Other than S…

> this project is funded by NASA

Partially. They have a fixed-price contract to land humans on the Moon, and notably got that contract because they severely undercut the other bids and were the only bid that actually fit within the available budget: they bid $2.94B, while Blue Origin bid $5.99B and Dynetics $9.08B.

That 3 billion is also much less than what they're spending on the project.

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

#145

Post by generuso »

aaronharnly wrote: post #25
dmix wrote: post #17

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

Naive question: I obviously expect there to be flames from the engines, but there were flames on the lower sides for quite a while after the catch – is that expected?

It is common for Starship prototypes to have uncontrolled fires, but it is obviously not a good thing.

For example, prototype number 10 exploded 8 minutes after landing [1] because of a seemingly insignificant fire at the bottom.

After today's flight there was a long lasting fire in the engine section, with occasional flaming pieces of plumbing raining down from the rocket. Examining the aftermath should help SpaceX to understand what improvements need to be made to prevent this from happening.

[1] https://youtu.be/XOQkk3ojNfM?t=38346

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

#147

Post by forgot-im-old »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #139
forgot-im-old wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is a nonsense conspiracy theory. It popped up based mostly off conserving a single man’s connection to 2001 SpaceX. Does Starship enable brilliant pebbles? Sure. But that’s because it provides easy access to space. Starlink could be described as a network of communication ‘pebbles’, as could Starshield, SpaceX’s actual military contract [1]. (Starship provides a technology platform for rapid launch. That’s more…

[flagged]

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

#148

Post by throwaway48476 »

bombcar wrote: post #111
gadders wrote: post #48

It still blows my mind how the landings are more exciting than the launches.

I'm completely mind-blown that not only can they do this, but we get 1080p video for almost the whole time. What cameras do they have that can look at something 30 KM up in the air that well?

At one time they were using gopros.

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

#149

Post by phkahler »

autonomousErwin wrote: post #16

That was crazy, 50% of me thought as it was coming in, especially as it pitched towards the tower, "they've overcompensated and are going to bring the whole tower down" but they absolutely nailed it.

Yeah but they did pass some flame down much of the tower. Pretty quick though, probably just cleaned it with fire.

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

#150

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #130
skrebbel wrote: post #123

Can someone explain to me why this is more impressive than landing the rocket? To a layman like me, it looks very similar - the thing looks just like a rocket but without a pointy tip, and on the way down I don't understand why difference that matters. (I mean I still think it's mind blowing, because I think landing a rocket is also mind blowing)

It is a rocket. The biggest difference with the Falcon 9 first stage is that this one is about 6 times as big (diameter of 9m vs 3.7m), and that catching it with the tower requires a much higher precision in landing location. The drone ships that Falcon 9 lands on are about 90 x 50 meter. To catch it with the tower, they need to be accurate to within a few meters. The big advantage of catching it with the tower is th…

The critical differences between Falcon 9 first stage and the Starship booster is that Starship booster lands using 3 engines rather than 1, and can throttle them down much further. 3 vs 1 gives Starship more directional control for precise landing (critical for this "catch" maneuver), and throttling allows it to hover, as it does right before the "catch".
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