4 ms·

In response to various people asking "why aren't they also trying..." (starship hover landing on water, booster catch by the tower, etc), remember that the plan

by mabbo 4y ago

In response to various people asking "why aren't they also trying..." (starship hover landing on water, booster catch by the tower, etc), remember that the plan has to be approved by the FAA. The more complex the test, the more things they can ask for changes about or deny the request over. Keep it simple and approval is easier.

xoa 4y ago
FWIW no I don't think it has anything to do with the FAA. They don't care about it blowing up on landing and taking lots of SpaceX's extremely expensive infrastructure with it, it wouldn't be any worse then it blowing up at lift off full of fuel which naturally has already been accounted for as part of the safety and environmental review. SpaceX though very much cares, and it's cheaper for them to expend an SS+SH (the whole point of which is to mass manufacture and next version is improved already) then tower, fueling infra etc. Geographic constraints have forced them to have a lot of stuff much closer to the pad than might otherwise be ideal. An explosion at launch would be legitimately painful, would easily be months of delay not due to regulations but just in raw rebuilding, and set back their whole schedule and moment they can start putting it to work. Wouldn't kill it or anything, but it'd suck, which is why "minimum goal" has been stated to be getting high enough above the tower before blowing up to not hurt anything on the ground, then its gravy (obviously everyone would prefer it do much better than that). So they're being quite deliberate, pushing but not reckless gambling. They're running a hardware rich program, they can afford to do that, it's part of their competitive advantage. They'll start trying to land SH for real once they're confident the odds of avoiding any serious tower damage are sufficiently high.
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  They could still do the re-entry burn and behave as if they would catch the booster/starship but over water without any infrastructure nearby. I’m a bit surprised they don’t because seeing if the heat shield survives the re-enrty maneuver would have been quite interesting.

by mabbo 4y ago

xoa 4y ago

FWIW no I don't think it has anything to do with the FAA. They don't care about it blowing up on landing and taking lots of SpaceX's extremely expensive infrastructure with it, it wouldn't be any worse then it blowing up at lift off full of fuel which naturally has already been accounted for as part of the safety and environmental review. SpaceX though very much cares, and it's cheaper for them to expend an SS+SH (the whole point of which is to mass manufacture and next version is improved already) then tower, fueling infra etc. Geographic constraints have forced them to have a lot of stuff much closer to the pad than might otherwise be ideal. An explosion at launch would be legitimately painful, would easily be months of delay not due to regulations but just in raw rebuilding, and set back their whole schedule and moment they can start putting it to work. Wouldn't kill it or anything, but it'd suck, which is why "minimum goal" has been stated to be getting high enough above the tower before blowing up to not hurt anything on the ground, then its gravy (obviously everyone would prefer it do much better than that). So they're being quite deliberate, pushing but not reckless gambling. They're running a hardware rich program, they can afford to do that, it's part of their competitive advantage. They'll start trying to land SH for real once they're confident the odds of avoiding any serious tower damage are sufficiently high.

pantalaimon 4y ago
They could still do the re-entry burn and behave as if they would catch the booster/starship but over water without any infrastructure nearby. I’m a bit surprised they don’t because seeing if the heat shield survives the re-enrty maneuver would have been quite interesting.