Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico • Hacker News Board

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#281

Post by inglor_cz » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

Stainless steel is one helluva material.

Already the first launch of Starship a year ago showed how tough the rocket was. It was out of control, spinning wildly in high winds, and yet it still held together and had to be blown up remotely. Anything made of aluminium or aluminium alloys would have been torn to tiny pieces by the sheer aerodynamic force alone.

And now, the melting flap that was still capable of actuation and steering the ship towards a successful landing...

One day, this sturdiness is going to save some lives.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#282

Post by phkahler » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

me_me_me wrote: post #200

thegrim33 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Keeping people from being riddled with cancer in 6months trip is not trivial." It's pretty trivial. Put mass in between you and space. It's already been researched to death and we have many years worth of data about the subject.

> It's pretty trivial. Put mass in between you and space. Seems like you quite confident. So go on. Expand on that a bit... its trivial after all. You will teleport all that mass to ELO? Or use tracker beam to capture asteroid and space mine it to smelt shielding. I am super curious how you solve it trivially. edit: You downvote but dont explain this trivial solution. Am I asking too much? Calling someone out to expl…

We've had people in space for close to a year, so the trip to Mars shouldn't kill them. Once on mars they'll still need shielding. One option for shelter might be to bore some underground tunnels. A smallish electric tunnel boring machine that could fit in a starship might just be the ticket to building sheltered habitats on Mars. Funny that Elon already has another company that makes these.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#283

Post by inglor_cz » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

bradley13 wrote: post #244

I hope they have footage from ships. It would be great to see actual videos of the soft landings. One dumb question I have: There was no payload, and yet starship used essentially all of its fuel to achieve this trajectory. How does this compute?

Not a dumb question, they simply didn't fill the rocket completely up.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#284

Post by mrandish » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

creshal wrote: post #203

macintux wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The door design isn't final yet, there's no point in whining about it. Your first clause is correct, the second is unnecessarily hostile.

I'm just getting really irritated by the amount of concern trolling surrounding SpaceX. Everything they do "must" have a gotcha, because clearly they cannot be as far ahead of the competition as they daily prove to be.

Yeah, I agree with you. Healthy skepticism is generally a good thing but now SpaceX has clearly demonstrated an unprecedented ability to solve a large number of insanely difficult problems. At some point, it becomes unreasonable to "yeah, but..." less difficult things like cargo doors.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#285

Post by ericcumbee » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #281

Stainless steel is one helluva material. Already the first launch of Starship a year ago showed how tough the rocket was. It was out of control, spinning wildly in high winds, and yet it still held together and had to be blown up remotely. Anything made of aluminium or aluminium alloys would have been torn to tiny pieces by the sheer aerodynamic force alone. And now, the melting flap that was still capable of actuati…

>Already the first launch of Starship a year ago showed how tough the rocket was. >It was out of control, spinning wildly in high winds, and yet it still held >together and had to be blown up remotely.

and even when they blew it up, it just laughed until it depressurized enough to break up.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#286

Post by jlmorton » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:18 PM UTC

dividedbyzero wrote: post #262

> SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA's Artemis moon program So four people would arrive at Lunar orbit in an Orion, board a huge prepositioned Starship, and fly that down to the surface?

The eventual plan is to build an orbiting space station, the Lunar Gateway. Astronauts will then launch on SLS/Orion, which will perform a Trans Lunar Injection.

However, before that, a Starship will be launched into LEO. There will then be something like 17 (the actual number is not clear, but it is a lot) Starship tankers that will launch to re-fuel the original Starship.

The Starship then does a Trans Lunar Injection. The Orion docks with the Lunar Gateway, Starship docks with the Lunar Gateway, the astronauts transition to Starship, which does a propulsive landing on the moon.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#287

Post by cryptonector » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:19 PM UTC

golol wrote: post #239

delichon wrote: post #81

Watching pieces of the ship melt off, but then seeing it make a relatively controlled landing, is perversely confidence building. If it can survive that kind of damage on a control surface maybe it's a quite robust craft.

Exactly. Everyone was worried about reentry, but perhaps more concerning than the question of whether the headshield tiles work was the question how well the material below can handle failures. Now we know significant failures of tiles do not have to lead to mission loss.

Failure of the tanks would undoubtedly have been catastrophic. Partial failure of a flight control surface proved survivable.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#288

Post by salesynerd » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:20 PM UTC

mrandish wrote: post #253

Just watched the recorded live stream and... wow! What a show. Incredible views of a test that appears to have successfully achieved all potential objectives through reentry, rotation maneuver, relight, landing burn and upright water landing in the Indian Ocean. The only unfortunate bit was some debris cracking the camera lens during the last part of reentry so the view for spectators was occluded but SpaceX maintain…

The real-time view of the re-entry through the plasma was phenomenal!

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#289

Post by ein0p » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:21 PM UTC

How did Boeing fall so far behind?

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#290

Post by yayitswei » Thu, Jun 06, 2024, 4:23 PM UTC

Booster executed a successful landing burn and had a soft splashdown. Starship survived reentry, did the flip and landing burn, and splashed down. There was visible damage to the flaps.