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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]

#241

Post by sbuttgereit »

max_ wrote: post #201

At this point I am finding it hard to hate Elon Musk. For everything he does that has annoyed me (like Gloating at people being bombed in the middle east) — his business acumen has completely unlocked for people what they we thought was impossible.

People are complex. This is nuance.

There should be nothing wrong with recognizing that any individual is a mix of things you're going to like and things you're not. That could be judged all the way to a mix of things which are morally correct, amoral, or immoral... but the reality is probably a mix.

It should be OK to praise the guy for those good traits and in turn to criticize the guy for what he does wrong: both in turn calling out the specific actions and less "the person". Its rare that demonizing someone is really appropriate or anything other than self-serving and we should see those that make that effort in that light.

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

#243

Post by s1291 »

JorgeGT wrote: post #220
autonomousErwin wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought the liquid sloshing would be one of the hardest to simulate (considering how chaotic fluid mechanics is). Interestingly, I think this caused the 2nd Falcon launch to fail (the LOX sloshing).

It is difficult, but there are modeling approaches that work, such as VoF ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_of_fluid_method ). Basically, in addition to velocity, pressure, temperature, etc., you store an additional scalar in each cell of your computational mesh representing the liquid's volume fraction. Then, you solve an additional equation to transport that scalar.

Solving the Navier-Stokes equations numerically in 3D is very time-consuming, even on HPC clusters, not to mention the additional modeling required for multiphase flows. Your answer implies that the solutions are obtained almost instantaneously, which is not the case.

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

#245

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

ptek wrote: post #52

Very inspiring, glad I woke up to watch it. Congratulations to the SpaceX team. This is what competition looks like. It’s funny how last decade SpaceX had to sue the government to get more launches.

Well that may still continue to happen. The wonderful and competent state of California is literally trying to block SpaceX launches over Musk’s constitutionally protected political speech:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/10/california-reject-m...

I cannot remember a more explicit case of authoritarian government abuse in a developed nation in recent memory, and it’s especially infuriating given SpaceX and Musk are one of the most important and innovative companies and leaders of all time. No other country would think to look at such accomplishments and try to undermine themselves through petty politics and lawfare.

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

#246

Post by throwaway4aday »

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)

The tower is also how they plan to perform maintenance and re-staging for another launch. The tower can place it back on the launch structure or lower it down to the ground if it needs to be transported back to an enclosure for extensive repairs but a lot of work is just done with it at the tower. I imagine the goal is to eventually get to an automated system that catches the booster, inspects it for damage, clears it for relaunch, positions it on the launch structure, grabs another Sharship second stage and stacks it and then refuels the whole system and launches as soon as possible.

Plus it's really big https://images-bonnier.imgix.net/files/ill/production/Starsh...

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

#250

Post by inemesitaffia »

flaburgan wrote: post #76
treespace8 wrote: post #14

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?

Read the article "SpaceX flight Ops"
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