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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]

#451

Post by grecy »

foobarian wrote: post #235
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.

Even without the catch step, I always feel like their boosters are coming down way too fast way too late, with engines reigniting startlingly close to surface. Never ceases to surprise me.

Prior to today the only landings you've seen are Falcon 9, which has to do a "hoverslam" because it can't throttle low enough to actually hover.

Even just one engine in minimum thrust would make the rocket go up when empty.. so the computer lights the engine at the precise right moment so it will have 0 velocity at 0 altitude, then it cuts off the engine. "Hoverslam".

The Starship booster is different, it can actually hover.

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

#452

Post by macintux »

mlindner wrote: post #409
bjamesking wrote: post #362

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.

They do this every launch unfortunately. Youtube seems completely inept at stopping them. They make enough money to hire hundreds of thousands of fake accounts to subscribe.

Musk choosing to abandon YouTube to push his other company didn’t help.

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

#453

Post by _ph_ »

briandw wrote: post #411

Imagine the number of amazing space telescopes that we are going to get! When it's cheep to launch a 10m diameter object into space, so many possibilites open up.

For things like that, they could build special versions of the star ship which remain in orbit as the housing. They would need no flaps, no tiles, just the 6 engines and the fuel tank. The body of the starship itself would be the telescopes tube.

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

#454

Post by wolf550e »

h2odragon wrote: post #177

My wife asked "Why is this a big deal?", so I gave her a link to Handmer's 2021 explanation: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st... She's not an enthusiast; she's got an impression from SciFi that going to mars shouldn't be that hard.

Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct would have got "flags and footprints" on Mars without needing something like Starship. He worked on a version of SLS in 1989 in Martin Marietta that would have cost $1B and been ready in the second half of the 90s and would be retiring soon after many successful flight to Mars (and to the Moon), but instead we got SLS and Orion so we need Starship to get anything done.

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

#455

Post by gamblor956 »

chasd00 wrote: post #296
XorNot wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FAA needs more funding at this point. They're not staffed for the rate of launch requests which commercial space has grown too.

More money would make the situation worse. They need competent leadership. Everyone like to just say “add more money” because it means no actual operational change to the status quo.

The FAA already has competent leadership and staff. They don't have the budget to handle the increasing number of tasks they have been given to manage.

The FAA manages more flights and space launch operations than it did in the 1980s, when it had a budget more than quadruple the size.

To put it bluntly: you get what you pay for.

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

#456

Post by jccooper »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #219
dtquad wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

how much liquid fuel is present when it lands? I assumed all the clouds it was giving off was it dumping fuel to make sure it was empty on landing

That's probably venting of excess pressurants and/or an engine purge.

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

#458

Post by jccooper »

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.

There's also a very impressive sensor and actuator story.

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

#459

Post by WalterBright »

credit_guy wrote: post #109
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?

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…

> and commercial profit was not one of them

But it's high cost was the end of it.

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

#460

Post by grecy »

systemvoltage wrote: post #263
nomilk wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never considered a 70m tall chunk of mostly metal "agile", but the way it's controlled into the arms so precisely is something to behold.

Do you know what the entire booster is hanging off of? It can't be the fins. How is the load transferred to the arms?

The booster landed on "pins" that are structural load points and designed to support it's weight.

Here is a brilliant profile shot looking down one of the "arms" after the catch today, you can clearly see it resting on the "pins", not the grid fins.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F7...

They also use those "pins" to raise/lower it with a crane when they need to during construction and during transport to the launch tower. It's the primary mode of lifting the thing

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