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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]

#471

Post by bamboozled »

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…

What is all this rocketry doing for climate change if they're burning methane? Hopefully it's methane from landfills etc?

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

#472

Post by diebeforei485 »

moffkalast wrote: post #336
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.

Well I mean going to Mars isn't that hard per se, a fair few countries have done it... but carrying enough supplies and shielding to last people 2 years until the return trip and then actually getting back are way harder problems. Seeing Starship get burnthrough on these suborbital launches really shows how hard it'll be to do Mars return entry with a fair few extra km/s.

Only the US and China have landed successfully on Mars. China achieved this in 2021. Russia/USSR tried multiple times and didn't succeed.

Other countries have sent satellites to orbit around Mars, which is not the same thing.

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

#473

Post by jdminhbg »

bearjaws wrote: post #68
sourcecodeplz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't do lives on youtube, those are scammers. it is always on x.com

Would be great if I could stream to my Chromecast or AppleTV from X without using airplay streaming my whole browser...

There used to be a Twitter AppleTV app and I recently saw an X app for TV platforms has been brought back, but I don’t know if the AppleTV version is out yet.

Of course I’d rather they just stream to YouTube in 4K.

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

#474

Post by dotnet00 »

philistine wrote: post #352
shirro wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second stage reuse seems the far more challenging problem. Other companies should have reusable boosters soon but if significant amounts of Starship continue to ablate on the way down they could be faced with a disposable Starship competing with smaller and cheaper second stages that are well sized for typical payloads. We already knew boosters can be flown back to launch sites reliably with high accuracy. We don't k…

> Other companies should have reusable boosters soon You're way too optimistic. Starship will deliver commercial payloads, with SpaceX phasing out Falcon 9 outside of ISS launches, before anyone has a reusable Falcon 9 equivalent. It pains me to say this, but SpaceX is in a class all its own.

New Glenn finally has flight hardware undergoing pre-flight testing. I think they're pretty likely to manage to fly in early/mid 2025, and they do aim to recover the booster in their first try.

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

#475

Post by WalterBright »

usrusr wrote: post #207
fragmede wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the space shuttle was "reusable". It had to be taken apart and meticulously cleaned and tested and basically had to be rebuilt after each flight, in a process called turnaround. SpaceX's rockets are much closer to what you'd consider reusable.

I wonder how much of that difference is because the space shuttle was human rated from the start: F9 eventually got there, but only after plenty of "testing in production" with disposable payloads. The other big difference, an elephant in the room grade difference I think, is that SpaceX reliability was developed with memories of a reusable vehicle failing mostly due to turnaround costs and risks on everyone's minds.…

I had an email exchange with Homer Hickam, before SpaceX existed, where I remarked that the shuttle design looked like a giant kludge, and a winged reentry vehicle was a fundamentally bad design, for various reasons which I enumerated elsewhere in this thread.

He emailed back that he agreed with my reasons and had argued that case with NASA in the early stages of the shuttle program.

So NASA was aware of this at the time.

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

#476

Post by mrandish »

gyre007 wrote: post #463

Incredible achievement, my American friends! Congrats! We, Europeans, can only feel jealous, but hey at least we have free [but comically broken and dysfunctional] healthcare, so, there's that. I hope you'll bring a lot more progress to humankind beyond space exploration!

The long-term goal is becoming a multi-planet species, so in that context it's not about countries. Go Earth!

(also, while NASA has been generally helpful to SpaceX's efforts, American FAA bureaucrats have managed to inject unnecessary delays and uncertainty into the process (in addition to some necessary delays).

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

#477

Post by jfoster »

stetrain wrote: post #430
dtquad wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been some kind of beef between Elon Musk and the Biden administration even before Musk's public right-wing turn. For example Biden has given speeches praising US EV vehicle manufacturers and not mentioning Tesla but mentioning all their competitors.

[flagged]

What did the post(s) say?

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

#478

Post by stetrain »

perlgeek wrote: post #448

During/before the water landing of Ship, the telemetry indication for the rocket motors stayed off. Does that mean the landing burn was unsuccessful? Or was that just a glitch in the telemetry?

In the video you can see the engines light (reflecting off the metal control flap and water) and the ship make a soft touchdown on the water. It then tips over and the tanks pop from the force of smacking the water sideways.

So the landing burn seems to have been a success.

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

#479

Post by WalterBright »

philistine wrote: post #352
shirro wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second stage reuse seems the far more challenging problem. Other companies should have reusable boosters soon but if significant amounts of Starship continue to ablate on the way down they could be faced with a disposable Starship competing with smaller and cheaper second stages that are well sized for typical payloads. We already knew boosters can be flown back to launch sites reliably with high accuracy. We don't k…

> Other companies should have reusable boosters soon You're way too optimistic. Starship will deliver commercial payloads, with SpaceX phasing out Falcon 9 outside of ISS launches, before anyone has a reusable Falcon 9 equivalent. It pains me to say this, but SpaceX is in a class all its own.

Why does it pain you? Musk's SpaceX has produced several enormous advancements in space technology.

SpaceX is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, private technology company in history.

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

#480

Post by cma »

chasd00 wrote: post #286
api wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t they look at all kinds of ideas earlier like squirting some propellant or water out over the skin on the way down, and wasn’t steel chosen for its thermal robustness? Did they get into the problem and realize it’s a lot harder and abandon those things for tiles? Maybe they will have to sacrifice more payload mass for active or passive shielding or more fuel for powered deceleration. That would yield a less imp…

Yeah for rapid reusability tiles aren’t going to work, too fragile. Iirc it was with a lot of reluctance they went with tiles and will have to make breakthroughs on the heat shielding to get where they want to be.

Inspection might be easier with computer vision advances since the space shuttle.
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