15 ms·
The rate of descent is absolutely astonishing, 8km -> 1km in 20 seconds, then just hovers above the water. Absolutely incredible work by the SpaceX team. Livin
by bearjaws 2y ago
The rate of descent is absolutely astonishing, 8km -> 1km in 20 seconds, then just hovers above the water. Absolutely incredible work by the SpaceX team.
Living in central Florida I cannot wait for the new launch facility to come online. We're going to have lines of spectators into the space coast like we did for the shuttle.
If any of you are heading to Disney World you should stop by the NASA Kennedy Visitor Complex, it is so well done and not that expensive (it takes less time than 1 line at Disney world to get to :) ). It has the original launch control room for Apollo that you can tour, a Saturn V rocket that is laid horizontally and you can walk under, the crew module for the moon landing. My favorite part is the Atlantis shuttle suspended from the ceiling, they left it in its "raw" landed format with scorch marks and tiles, it looks absolutely amazing.
- sixQuarks 2y agoYeah it’s hard to comprehend how powerful those engines are. The booster is relatively light without all the propellant and starship when it’s attempting to land, but it’s still 30 stories tall and I’m assuming it weighs dozens of tons.
- chasd00 2y agoiirc only 3 ignite for the landing burn, those engines are freaking monsters. I love how small they are, the latest Raptor revision is so slim and compact. The power density is just mind boggling.
- sobellian 2y agoYou can see for yourself in the video - all 13 center engines attempt to light, and all but one do so.
- arpinum 2y agoSimilar to ship, they start up more engines than needed in case a few fail, then immediately shut down the extra engines.
- arrowsmith 2y agoWhere is this visible in the video? EDIT: oh wait is it the diagram in the bottom left?
- foobarian 2y agoIt blew my mind that just the fuel pump for just one engine has a power rated in the tens of thousands of horsepower/kW.
- schmidtleonard 2y agoYep, those pumps have to push the propellant into the explosion harder than the explosion pushes back. That takes serious power!
- KennyBlanken 2y agoNot only that - spacex uses the highest chamber pressures, enormously high compared to almost any other engine.
- foobarian 2y agoSo thinking where the leverage is - is it like hydraulics where the input cross-section is a lot smaller than the output cross-section? That's kinda what the nozzle looks like.
- schmidtleonard 2y agoYes, but also the propellant explodes after being pumped in, so you pump in a tiny volume and exhaust an enormous volume.
- aaronblohowiak 2y agoYou pump in a huge volume and exhaust an inconceivable volume
- schmidtleonard 2y agoThat's fair, lol.
- dotancohen 2y ago
- m4rtink 2y agoIts 200+ tons dry apparently when landing.
- gadders 2y agoIt's mad how rocket landings are now more exciting than rocket launches.
- cjk2 2y agoThey used to be far more exciting. It's the anticipation of less excitement that is nail biting :D
- tim333 2y agoIt's one of the fun things with SpaceX that with many flights you don't quite know what's going to blow up or go wrong. The commercial flights are reliable but the experimental ones are interesting.
- steve1977 2y agoWhen I was young, there were no rocket landings.
- GJim 2y agoMy grandfather recalls (what he later found out to be) a rocket landing in London's east end during his youth. There were quite a lot of them at the time.
- jonah 2y ago"RSD"? (Rapid Scheduled Disassembly)
- SoftTalker 2y agoGerman V1 or V2, presumably.
- tialaramex 2y agoOnly the V2 is a rocket, the V1 is a flying bomb. They're both terror weapons, as actual products they have no direct military value, they exist solely in order to scare the shit out of enemy civilians, but liquid fuelled rockets are an invention with a whole lot of interesting practical applications - the V1 is just a bad idea (unless you have unlimited resources, which the Germans did not, and your goal is to terrify enemy civilians, which is not a legitimate military strategy).
- DavidPeiffer 2y agoFor anyone who has been there more than a couple years back, it's worth checking it out again. They added Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex, and have also been expanding the Astronaut Training Experience. The exhibits are all very well done. The bus tours are also neat, visiting and walking around launch pads from the early days of space exploration, seeing the bunker near a launch pad with ~8" thick glass and the mechanical linkage over a couple hundred feet which let them monitor the weight of the added fuel on an early mission. I've gone 7 times since I was a child, and love the new things I find.
- jzig 2y agoHello from Gainesville! Thanks for recommending the NASA Kennedy Visitor Complex. We will have to visit next time we make a trip to Orlando.
- mywacaday 2y agoI had the pleasure of seeing Endeavour being brought out on a Crawler-transporter in 2008 from about 300 meters away on the LC 39 Observation Gantry. Its a missed bucket list item that I never got to see one launch. The visitor complex is well worth a visit.
- somenameforme 2y agoThe 'worst' thing about watching space launches on streams is that you simply cannot grasp how ridiculously huge these things are. Even if, like in the stream today, you see a water tower for some scale, the size discrepancies just make it so hard to intuit. Starship is 121 meters high. That's something taller than a football field, jetting off into space! I've only gotten to see a decommissioned Space Shuttle in person, but that was also amazing. Even its fuel tank [1] makes you feel just tiny, yet it's merely 47m. Getting to see Starship live would be such an amazing opportunity. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank
- tim333 2y agoI've got the black and white arty photo as my lockscreen which gives you an idea https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/E46BxzjjUkpthVBNE6k8mn-1920-80.jpeg.webp https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/E46BxzjjUkpthVBNE6k8mn-192...
- jstanley 2y agoIt reminds me of the old photos of builders eating their lunch atop half-finished skyscrapers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_atop_a_Skyscraper https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_atop_a_Skyscraper
- tim333 2y agoI think it was inspired by that. There's a high resolution version here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=52398.0;attach=2051995;image https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;...
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoThey also did an homage to that in Westworld Season 3! https://www.postapocalypticmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/index5-3-1655990462-1536x768.jpg https://www.postapocalypticmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022... Via: https://www.postapocalypticmedia.com/westworld-season-4-filming-location/ https://www.postapocalypticmedia.com/westworld-season-4-film...
- vl 2y agoWhat is even more impressive to me is that they were able to quite reliably stream all this through Starlink. This shows how mature and usable Starlink is. The fact that you can have live internet connection on re-entering space ship - truly the future is here.
- IG_Semmelweiss 2y agoIncredible demo of great service. If you can get reliable video from space, it makes wifi on a commercial plane look like cakewalk. What will viasat stockholders think now?
- callalex 2y agoAs long as they stay sane and reliable they will have nothing to worry about. Internet connectivity is too important to rely on service that can be taken away without notice by one irrational angry tweet or xhit or whatever they’re called now.
- inemesitaffia 2y agoIt was provided that way in the first place. Whims that provide can take away. So pay for your services in full and don't leak negotiation documents.
- amelius 2y agoThe video isn't really live. The original may have had buffering problems, etc.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoNothing is live, not even conversations with people in the same room, 1 ns per ft delayed.
- behnamoh 2y agoNot even conversations in our own minds, as the thought that was shaped in part of the brain needs time to be transferred to consciousness.
- dcdc123 2y agoThe Houston center is amazing as well! They have a tour where you get to sit in the guest theater/gallery of the original command room and watch a shortened version of the moon landing with all the controls, monitors, projectors, etc all automated to show what was presented during the original landing.
- chasd00 2y agoI think Houston also has the most complete Saturn V too. It's on its side in a shed out back basically.
- bartread 2y agoThe way the booster comes down is nuts. 90km to 1km in 100 seconds, it reaches maximum velocity under gravity at a bit over 20km, then air resistance acts as a brake, and they only fire the engines to slow it down the rest of the way at 1km. Bonkers.
- dylan604 2y agoThe thing that tickles me is that it has to slow down to reach terminal velocity rather than the normal way of thinking about objects speeding up to reach terminal velocity.
- andromaton 2y agoWait a minute; we've been lied to!
- bee_rider 2y agoI’m probably missing something important here, but isn’t this true of most things that de-orbit into an atmosphere?
- gpm 2y agoThey're comparing to the average falling object not the average de-orbiting object.
- dylan604 2y agonot missing anything, but it's just one of those things about how fast orbital speeds are. yes, i know orbital speeds are around 17,000 mph. this is just another example of just how fast that is. a lot of people might be familiar with falling objects speeding up to get to terminal velocity which is kind of a speed limit for normal things. for de-orbiting spacecraft, this is just another milestone of slow speeds to achieve and not a limit of how fast it goes. sometimes just looking at things from a different perspective makes me smile on the relative nature of "fast"
- 2y ago
- trollerator23 2y agoFinally! It only took them 4 tries!
- metadat 2y agoIn case you want to watch from the time of liftoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFkqZF-Ss7o&t=6250s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFkqZF-Ss7o&t=6250s
- a012 2y agoThe scene from the drone looks so unrealistic, it feels like in a video game or a sci-fi movie.
- rbanffy 2y ago> If any of you are heading to Disney World you should stop by the NASA Kennedy Visitor Complex To hell with Disney. KSC is a lot more interesting. And much cheaper. And, with SpaceX's increased launch cadence, the odds of watching a rocket launch for free increase dramatically from the shuttle era.