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Musk bought SpaceX and Starlink just like Twitter.
Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
601–610 of 1001 posts
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#602Pretty impressive. The engineering team at SpaceX is really something. Some thoughts; The 'chopsticks catch' was amazing to watch. Seems like it adds a lot of risk and clearly the booster needs additional fire suppression systems :-) perhaps the tower could mount something that sprays the booster like the barges have for the F9 boosters. The heatshield held out for a much longer time, the asymmetric heating on the fl…
>The heatshield held out for a much longer time, the asymmetric heating on the flaps was interesting. I had guessed that all four flaps would have equivalent heating based on an approach that was basically that side of the rocket perpendicular to the flow but it seems like that isn't the case. Still it seems like they are close to having something workable here.
Heat shielding didn't look relevant at this section of the flight at all. The booster didn't have any shielding.
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#603Nothing 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.
When Musk first proposed this, I thought he was crazy. It seemed like something a school boy would draw up. Now I think this will become routine and forgettable after a few more successes. Is there a word for that - something out of fiction becoming mundane?
This happened with LLMs in a big way. Basically humanity surpassed some kind of AI milestone and we zoomed past the turing test in a big way. But thanks to social media everyone is sort of rolling their eyes at it.
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#604Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The detonation at the end was pretty spectacular too, but I suspect that structurally the tanks failed as the rocket hit the water vs anything that was an engineering failure. It's possible that SpaceX programed the AFTS to trigger some time after the rocket touched down in the water. Just to make sure that it completely submerges quickly. > I can easily imagine that flight 6 will be nominal end to end without any…
correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think the second stage is meant to be caught. It will have legs to land on Earth/Mars without any landing infrastructure.
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Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
The booster was falling at 4500 Km/h 30 seconds before the catch with 2-3% fuel left. How is that amount of fuel remotely enough to stop the downward momentum?
First off, the booster was going about 1250 km/h when it started its landing burn, it relied purely on drag to get it slowed down to that speed. Going by the telemetry of the seconds before the landing burn and noting the speed vs time, it seems drag was around 40 m/s^2 when it was going at around 3000 km/h. Since drag depends on velocity squared though, it had reduced to just above 10 m/s^2 just before the engines l…
That's excellent work, only nit is I think these were not the v3 raptors. I think they're just now starting production of those, so they still have a bunch of earlier ones they need to use up in these early test flights. This actually makes your calculation more accurate, as earlier versions will need a slightly longer burn time.
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#606Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#607Very 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.
California officials reject more SpaceX launches, with some citing Musk's X posts https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1845131546501734440...
The California Coastal Commission has no authority over a Federal (Military) launch range so there's no need for real concern. Yes using people's personal opinions for denial is illegal, but it's moot regardless. So I'm not sure SpaceX could sue for any damages.
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#608Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think the second stage is meant to be caught. It will have legs to land on Earth/Mars without any landing infrastructure.
It is expected to land astronauts on the Moon as well this decade, which will certainly require legs.
That is a different version. The ones launching/landing on Earth are supposed to be caught by arms similar to the booster.