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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]

#361

Post by renewiltord »

miyuru wrote: post #114
monkeydust wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watched several times, amazing stuff. Had flashbacks to playing Jupiter Landing on the C64! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Lander Edit: SpaceX should create a simple 'catch' the rocket game. Play in browser style. Just for kicks and marketing.

> Edit: SpaceX should create a simple 'catch' the rocket game. Play in browser style. Just for kicks and marketing. there is, it was discussed in the FAA thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821220

This is a pretty fun game. Not so easy. Good job to the creator for having added some mechanics that make it work.

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

#362

Post by bjamesking »

I was watching a youtube stream with tens of thousands of viewers and 20 seconds before launch it switched to an AI generated video of Elon on stage talking about his "crypto currency program". It was so well executed and generated, it nearly felt real.

The violent anger I felt and still feel for scammers has ruined my day.

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

#363

Post by VohuMana »

Wow, I knew they were going to try to catch the booster this time but I really didn’t think it was going to work on the first try, I was just hoping they didn’t destroy the launch tower in the process. Congrats to the SpaceX team, absolutely amazing! Hope y’all are celebrating

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

#364

Post by yonatan8070 »

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?

The thing that impresses me even more is the kinds of cameras they mount on the rocket. How do they shield it from all the heat and debris with a material that's optically clear?

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

#367

Post by fastball »

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?

Shuttle itself was refurbishable, but not rapidly re-usable. It was also incredibly expensive to build and refurbish. A shuttle launch also utilized boosters that were not re-usable.

Starship is supposed to be (and clearly well on the way to being) fully rapidly re-usable. That means all stages (in this case two) are re-usable, and that the capital and time required to get either stage flight ready again after a flight should be minimal.

Said another way – it is cheaper for SpaceX to build an entirely new Starship + Booster than it was to refurbish a Shuttle between flights, by a factor of about 4x ($90M for a Starship+Booster / $400m for Shuttle refurb).

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

#369

Post by wildzzz »

dtquad wrote: post #183
ghc wrote: post #23

Nothing could have prepared me for how that catch looked. I was sure the rocket was careening into the tower at the last second before it straightened out. The control algorithms must be incredible for the landing system to work within those small tolerances.

MIMO and nonlinear control theories are probably some of the hardest topics in all of engineering. SpaceX control system also has to compensate for the fuel moving inside their rockets so the control algorithms probably involve some kind of fast numerical fluid simulation. Another interesting thing SpaceX is doing is to use consumer-grade chips in triple redundancy configurations instead of using $100,000+ radiation-…

I spent 2 semesters covering controls and I barely felt like I learned anything.

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

#370

Post by malfist »

BurningFrog wrote: post #368

Do we know how much more efficient/cheaper landing by booster catch is compared to landing on a platform?

It's not just cheaper, it's preserving capacity. Every pound of landing gear you carry has to be offset with fuel to lift it, and then that fuel has to have fuel to lift it and on and on.
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