Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

901–910 of 1001 posts

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

#901

Post by stetrain »

nordsieck wrote: post #526
ChuckMcM wrote: post #516

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…

> 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…

> 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.

The SpaceX host on the stream said that they were going to try and touch it down on the water at more of an angle than the previous flight to attempt to get it to survive the initial splash-down so they could get some more data and video footage.

Obviously this wasn't guaranteed to succeed, but it indicates that they weren't planning to immediately detonate the ship on touchdown.

As I recall it was common on the early Falcon 9 landing tests that splashed down in the ocean to also explode after tipping over and smacking the water. Once they're actually landing them on a pad, tower, or ship that should be much less of an issue.

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

#902

Post by JoachimS »

rkagerer wrote: post #682
ChuckMcM wrote: post #516

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…

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…

Yes, we should probably assume that the SpaceX engineers have considered all of the risks HN readers are able to come up with in a few hours. And that they have evaluated alternatives like the added weight etc of having foldable legs on the booster.

The catchzilla solution is an example of their amazing ability to think out of the box. This solution, and things like the rapid evolution of the Raptor engine (see picture, story here: https://medium.com/@futurespaceworld/the-evolution-of-spacex...), dynamic engine configuration (33, 13, 3, zero, up again) and control is almost magically impressive. This is the stuff of Sci-Fi, brought to life.

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

#903

Post by pfdietz »

Dr4kn wrote: post #880
k4rli wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the progress if they're 2 years behind their schedule? In Q1 2025 they should already be launching the HLS according to the timeline.

Falcon 9 is still the most advanced rocket flying real missions to date. The only thing close to it is Blue Origin, which didn't even have their maiden flight yet. Is their timeline too optimistic? Yeah, but if the industry still catches up with F9 and they are close to having something a lot more advanced it really doesn't matter. Even without reusability nothing comes close to Starship's cargo capacity. If you don'…

And, eventually, if it becomes cheap enough to put people in space for the task, you can plan to actually maintain things there rather than design for extreme reliability.

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

#904

Post by caeril »

bottlepalm wrote: post #809
slimebot80 wrote: post #694

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.

Elon is the guy who said, "that is the craziest idea I've ever heard, here's billions, let's build it" It's 100% Musk that this happened, literally no one else would have done it. Everyone thought it was dumb until today. No company, no government or sci fi movie for that matter had even thought of it in the first place. SpaceX engineers given the green light by Musk, not NASA, made it a reality. That's not to say El…

[flagged]

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

#905

Post by rtkwe »

pfdietz wrote: post #878
rtkwe wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're still having some significant burn through problems on the upper stage fins during reentry it looks like. Way better than last time but the top part of the fin was glowing far a while after the main reentry finished.

Even with a disposable upper stage, I believe Starship would be cheaper per kg than F9 or FH.

Maybe. Kind of impossible to know until we see launch costs but you could make a much cheaper upper stage than they have if you wanted disposable. Trick with that is you need a payload heavy enough to justify it. Has SpaceX talked much about a disposable upper stage version of the system?

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

#907

Post by grecy »

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.

Driving around Africa basically every village had solar panels, a huge number of people had smart phones and internet.

The least developed country on earth is currently developing faster than any country ever has at any time in history.

Read the book “factfullness”

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

#909

Post by ninetyninenine »

caconym_ wrote: post #796
ninetyninenine wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 booster actually does have heat shielding behind the engine bells, to protect against aerodynamic heating on the return. In some of today's footage you can see it glowing yellow. However, Raptor 3 is supposed to obviate the need for this shielding.

Where did it glow yellow? What time in the video?

The booster doesn’t travel fast enough to need heat shielding ever.

It makes zero sense to use heat shielding behind the engine bells. Why? Think about it. If the booster renters the atmosphere engine bells first the engine bells would burn up BEFORE the air even touches the heat shield. If there are actually tiles there it’s just there to protect the booster from the heat of the exhaust.

> However, Raptor 3 is supposed to obviate the need for this shielding.

Not completely getting this. So there’s a case for the booster entering the atmosphere at orbital velocity engine bells first? I would think if they did this then THEY want the booster to burn up. Anything entering the atmosphere at that velocity needs to be made aerodynamically stable as it will be traveling faster then the speed of sound. This is what causes the heat. If you send something at the speed of sound engine bells first that’s not stable and is unlikely they will do that at all, with or without heat shielding.

I don’t think parent knows what he’s talking about.

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

#910

Post by hrnnnnnn »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #909
caconym_ wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The booster actually does have heat shielding behind the engine bells, to protect against aerodynamic heating on the return. In some of today's footage you can see it glowing yellow. However, Raptor 3 is supposed to obviate the need for this shielding.

Where did it glow yellow? What time in the video? The booster doesn’t travel fast enough to need heat shielding ever. It makes zero sense to use heat shielding behind the engine bells. Why? Think about it. If the booster renters the atmosphere engine bells first the engine bells would burn up BEFORE the air even touches the heat shield. If there are actually tiles there it’s just there to protect the booster from the…

Here's a timestamped link to Scott Manley's commentary video where he points out that the yellow glow at the bottom of the booster is the heat shielding behind the engines.

https://youtu.be/Ysx4t7ICO58?t=550

Post reply on HN