671–680 of 1001 posts
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California officials reject more SpaceX launches, with some citing Musk's X posts https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1845131546501734440...
That's madness. And unconstitutional.
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(1) Much larger than any previous rocket landing, (2) This rocket carried no landing gear (more efficient - landing gear is heavy), (3) This rocket landed right back at the place it needs to be to launch again - right on its launch tower - which in a routine situation might make it much faster to prepare it for the next relaunch. (4) It's yet another step in control prowess - impressive in itself.
I must say though "right on its launch tower" is fun and all... but things would have to get pretty extreme in the "routine" dimension for that to be very useful. If there are 20 first stages and 5 land/launch towers, for a first stage that only spends an hour in flight in between inspections.... well are you going to keep them parked on a scarce launch tower for maintenance? The towers with fill/launch infrastructur…
That's what they are aiming for, eventually.
Pretty 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…
What’s the advantage of catching the booster over landing it in the ground? Catching it seems like an extra complication.
I think the primary reason would be that landing legs are heavy, and it wastes performance to carry them. If your landing mechanism is mostly on the ground, you get that performance back.
Secondary reasons might include that it's simpler to get the booster right back to the pad. Once things have settled into an operational cadence, it's likely feasible to lower and lock the booster onto the stool, stack a ship on top, refuel, and relaunch -- no more messing around with barges, transport, weather issues, etc.
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It's hard to understand why people care so much about someone's personal political opinions. This is especially prevalent when working in places like Seattle and SF. People ostracizing their coworkers because of wrongthink. MDS like TDS is real. It's extremely toxic and it needs to stop. People's political beliefs are their own and connecting that to work is a recipe for disaster.
Musk isn't just some guy near your cubicle complaining about Mexican cooks.
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SpaceX is not Musk. It may be executing his vision, but it's a team of thousands of skilled and hard-working people, all eager to work on a Sunday for a chance to pull something like this off.
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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?
Because the rocket weighs a small fraction of what it did at launch, specifically because it only has 2-3% fuel left. Fuel is the vast majority of the vehicle weight at launch, kind of like an empty vs full can of soda.
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.
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We could have had this all along.
No. It all depends on cheap computation, reliable/free satellite location systems, and other stuff that weren't things in the (60s, 70s, 80s - pick your own starting point for "all along").
Pretty 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…
What’s the advantage of catching the booster over landing it in the ground? Catching it seems like an extra complication.