Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video] • Hacker News Board

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

#691

Post by rkagerer » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:17 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #689

rkagerer wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it adds a lot of risk I'm actually wondering about that. If I understand correctly, the arms can move up and down, and pivot around the tower. This allows them to correct for some error in the rocket trajectory and also (presumably) "soften" the final contact. Between the nozzles and the arms, it gives SpaceX a lot of degrees of freedom in the final seconds (you can see how the booster kind of "hovered" ri…

My thought (admittedly not well developed) is that smashing into a landing pad of concrete can damage that pad but it can be quickly repaired without affecting the ability to launch future rockets. If you damage the launch tower significantly you're going to have to suspend launches from it until you fix it. So the "higher risk" is more critical assets offline in the event of a non-optimal return.

Understood, although weren't they out of commission for a really long time anyway the last time they damaged their launchpad?

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

#692

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:19 PM UTC

neverrroot wrote: post #637

supportengineer wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could have had this all along.

We just needed more people like Elon.

I don't get this hero worship. Elon Musk didn't build and launch this rocket. Thousands of engineers, scientists and technicians did. Elon wrote their salary checks, but anyone with gobs of money could do that.

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

#693

Post by iwaztomack » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:21 PM UTC

What parts of this can be reused? I bet the engine is OK, but seems like the sides of the ... tube ... were pretty roughed up. I guess that's probably the cheapest part of the assembly though.

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

#694

Post by slimebot80 » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:26 PM UTC

The SpaceX engineers did a great job, as did NASA.

The media needs to stop blindly attributing this to "Elon Musk". He did well taking the risks NASA was not allowed to take at the start. But these days he is toxic to the media and toxic to reporting, so for that reason alone the media could smarted up a little. Well done SpaceX and NASA engineers.

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

#695

Post by mkl » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:27 PM UTC

asadotzler wrote: post #656

philistine wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Wildly incorrect. New Glenn is already here.

No it isn't. It might be soon in some early way: "the first launch is expected to take place no earlier than November 2024", "The booster for the flight is named So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance, alluding to the difficulty of landing a reusable booster on the first attempt." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Glenn

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

#696

Post by dang » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:29 PM UTC

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #598

dang wrote: post #506

[stub for offtopicness]

[flagged]

No, it's that you started a massive offtopic generic flamewar tangent on perhaps the single most repeated topic of the last couple years, nothing new or interesting can come of which. That's exactly what we're trying to avoid on HN; we want curious conversation about interesting things, and this is the opposite of that on all counts.

Not that your comment was by any means the worst example of this! But it was guaranteed to spin off into the off-topic flamewar that it did.

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41830516.)

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

#697

Post by cruffle_duffle » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:32 PM UTC

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]

[flagged]

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

#698

Post by altcognito » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:34 PM UTC

1shooner wrote: post #631

Yacovlewis wrote: post #567

People on earth are experiencing the Jetsons and the Flinstones at the same time

This is what makes it bittersweet. So many comments here talking about this being progress for 'humanity'. I may be cynical, but most of humanity will get no benefit from any of these accomplishments. This is technology owned by and ultimately in service of a minuscule fraction of humanity.

The launching of Starlink will absolutely improve the quality of internet to underserved countries and rural areas. Quality internet is a game changer.

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

#699

Post by gcanyon » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:35 PM UTC

kbmr wrote: post #615

gcanyon wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> control system also has to compensate for the fuel moving inside their rockets My stepfather worked as a programmer on the Apollo program, and the thing he always talked about as his biggest accomplishment was working on the "slosh problem" -- so yeah, props to the SpaceX team for managing that landing. And props to my stepdad for managing it on hardware that was... a billion times less capable? :-)

Did he get a chance to see any of the recent SpaceX accomplishments?

Nope, died fifteen years ago.

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

#700

Post by Yacovlewis » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 10:48 PM UTC

altcognito wrote: post #698

1shooner wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what makes it bittersweet. So many comments here talking about this being progress for 'humanity'. I may be cynical, but most of humanity will get no benefit from any of these accomplishments. This is technology owned by and ultimately in service of a minuscule fraction of humanity.

The launching of Starlink will absolutely improve the quality of internet to underserved countries and rural areas. Quality internet is a game changer.

Agreed. Even if it takes a long time for us to be riding rocket ships to visit our grandparents, we'll be benefiting from this technology way faster than that