Another great view: https://youtu.be/Vzyaud250Xo
Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
841–850 of 1001 posts
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#842Strategically this is huge for the US and NATO. Being able to put orders of magnitude more payload in orbit at a fraction of the cost of the competition is a huge advantage in controlling space. Starlink and starshield are already years ahead of what china and russia has, starship is going to widen that gap even further.
Amen! If it turns out we can’t make humans a multiplanetary species in any reasonable timeframe, at least we can make the last few decades of livable earth climate a friendly atmosphere for US business interests.
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#843Earlier quoted context omitted.
To get an inert object through the atmostphere and do real damage it has to be very large. That's a very inefficient way to use mass that you've boosted to orbit, even if it's relatively cheap to get there. So any weaponary they put up there will likely look fairly conventional. The speed of deployment and difficult of intercept would be the game-changer.
But why not a kinetic weapon though? 1000kg tungsten rod coming at 5 km/s and 3000K will sink any ship. A bit tricky to aim though - basically the moment you initiate the burn for re-entry, you give 15 minute warning.
Well you answered it yourself, anyone competent can dodge that. It's useful for attacking existing installations, but well, you can do that with any weapon.
Plus it's easier to intercept orbital bombardment since you know where it is ahead of time and have plenty of time to intercept.
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#844Why can only Elon do stuff like this and not BlueOrigin or the hundreds of other aerospace startups? Does he just have a 1/100000000 combination of intelligence, tenacity, and directionality that can't be matched by anyone, even those trying to emulate him as closely as possible?
Why do we think its Elon 'doing' this? Just curious, since it could just as well be that its the engineers and other leaders who could be the differentiator.
Because he is the kingpin. He chooses the staff, he guides them, he does everything at a high level.
You can hire new executives, you can't easily find a new Musk, and then you will fail.
See the problem?
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#845After watching this the project of changing brakes on my old car doesn't feel like that big of a project anymore.
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#846Can someone explain to me why this is more impressive than landing the rocket? To a layman like me, it looks very similar - the thing looks just like a rocket but without a pointy tip, and on the way down I don't understand why difference that matters. (I mean I still think it's mind blowing, because I think landing a rocket is also mind blowing)
(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.
Thanks!
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#847Does anyone know of a live map where we can see the trajectory of launches? Wondering if starship went above my head during reentry, but I can't find the info
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#848Do we know if there was a test payload?
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#849Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Im not mistaken, they already delivered a payload in one of the previous flights, because they cut the transmission for a while and didn’t show the payload bay like one previous flight.
I’m not sure they are, if only because of the altitude. They only took Starship up to 200km, Starlink are nearly double that so while they do have thrusters that’s quite the distance. Starship is not really in a true orbit, I forget the exact terminology but the trajectory is designed to re-enter regardless of what happens with the the flight.
It is in an suborbital trajectory but with enough energy to be equivalent to reaching orbit.
Think of it as instead of thrusting perpendicular to gravity for the most optimal energy usage Starship instead points its nose up gaining more altitude but now lacks the speed to miss earth as it comes down.
Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
#850Earlier quoted context omitted.
SpaceX likes to simplify and not to complexify things. And they demonstrated they can do landing accurately. Moreover I think Elon discusses the mechazilla arms in one of Tim Dodd interviews. They dont want longer arms, ratger shoeter. Think about physics involved for longer arms and how much more stress you will putt on the connection points.
> SpaceX likes to simplify and not to complexify things. And they demonstrated they can do landing accurately. Yes. Something falling into a web of cables. I'd say it may be simpler than optimally controlling that last SnakeX maneuver to be hugged by a short-armed T-Rex. > Think about physics involved for longer arms and how much more stress you will putt on the connection points. That's why I wasn't talking about ar…
Did you think about how you support the cables ? Surely they must be tensionned or else they will hang. How do you tension them ? Of course you know that the more the cable is tensionned, the more force you need. So you need a big-ass structure to hold all of these cables. They must be able to circulate around the perimeter, while being in tension, while not collapsing the structure that holds them, etc..
I'm sure you think it's easy, but I'm sure some people thought a bit more