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Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
- ein0p 2y agoWould this get the “Elon musk is not very bright because I don’t like his politics” crowd to finally STFU? Rhetorical question, of course not.
- sergiobeluti 2y ago[flagged]
- carabiner 2y agoWe have done much, but there is much to be done.
- exabrial 2y agoI think that catching a grain silo in mid air that fell in a semi-controlled way from effin low earth orbit is undeniably incredible. SpaceX continues to blow me away with these unbelievably lofty ideas. I remember seeing their "grasshopper" flights years ago and they blew it up because they couldn't land it at the time, who knew within a few years they'd be doing this.
- chippiewill 2y agoI think they still have "Grasshopper" (the custom test unit) sat outside at McGregor, it was F9R Dev1 (a modified F9 booster) that they had to destruct after one of the engines failed mid-hop. They were originally going to do high-altitude tests with an "F9 dev2" (similar to some of the early starship test launches) - but they gave up and just did some testing with real landing Falcon 9s instead.
- Hacktrick 2y agoyea this seemed like simple PID control to me, nothing impressive yawn
- viennaosaka 2y ago[dead]
- cynicalpeace 2y ago"Incredible!" in the voice of my 3 year old who just saw it :)
- erichocean 2y agoImagine not being Team Elon.
- belter 2y agoEveryday Astronaut Stream: https://youtu.be/pIKI7y3DTXk https://youtu.be/pIKI7y3DTXk
- ceejayoz 2y agoThat was craaaaaaaazy!
- DarmokJalad1701 2y agoThey caught it! Holy sh*t!
- dotnet00 2y agoAll the renders in the world couldn't have prepared me for how crazy the actual catch looked!
- choonway 2y agook now they have an actual reference and can animate it better haha.
- helpfulContrib 2y agoAmazing days ahead of us - if we can avoid blowing ourselves up over pathetic patches of land, we could have the entire solar system under our feet...
- falcor84 2y agoAgreed, but I'm concerned that humans being humans, we'll have the entire solar system to blow ourselves over. In The Expanse (which I highly recommend), they give a new lease on life to that quote attributed to Einstein "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones" - hurling asteroids towards a planet. I really hope humanity's real future will play out in accordance with some of the more optimistic elements in The Expanse.
- the_gorilla 2y ago> pathetic patches of land It's always funny seeing people pretend they live in a world where small issues like land or food don't affect them, even though they only have that privilege because a larger military says they should.
- helpfulContrib 2y ago[dead]
- nycdotnet 2y agoThey did it!
- jmyeet 2y agoStage 1 sucessfully caught. That was pretty incredible. I remember watching the Falcony Heavy launch when both boosters landed in sync. It's hanging pretty high in the air, I assume so the engines do less damage to the pad. One wonders how they're going to get it down. Do the chopsticks lower on the tower?
- chinathrow 2y agoYes, the chopsticks are attached to one giant lift.
- stagezerowil 2y agoYes, the chopsticks lower and raise. They will lower the tower onto a transport vehicle and send it back to the bay for examination, and then possible reflight.
- dotnet00 2y agoYep, they handle all the mounting/demounting ops on the launch mount, so they have to be able to move along the tower.
- sbuttgereit 2y agoThey'll lower it to the launch mount... the catch arms are effectively a crane. But I wonder if it's more "toasty" than they were expecting? There were some fires going at catch (those look out, at least on external camera views) and the engines are still a bit.... smokey. Don't know if that's normal... or if they were expecting it. My hunch is that they don't put it down for awhile. If there's still an issue were there are fires lingering inside, my hunch is they want that as far from the ground infrastructure as possible. Either way incredible progress.
- minetest2048 2y agoFrom the replay, it seems that the fire comes from methane from the RCS thrusters burning, so it seems normal
- 2y ago
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 2y agoCongratulations.
- valenceelectron 2y agoAlthough this is by far not the first landing of SpaceX boosters I've seen, this looked like scifi to me even in 2024.
- stagezerowil 2y agoHoly hell, they caught the booster!
- ipnon 2y agoMoon by 2030 and Mars by 2040 seems like a winning bet lately
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y agoThe Delta-V is comparable since you can aerobrake on mars. It's only the difference between the time. Earth to moon without Aerobraking is a delta v of around 13k/s, mars is 13.3
- mr_toad 2y agoAn additional advantage is that it’s theoretically possible to make fuel for Starship on Mars. The Luna lander will need to bring enough fuel for the return trip.
- napsterbr 2y agoAnd here I thought nothing would top the double landing view from Falcon Heavy...
- NoxiousPluK 2y agoThat was such a magical moment
- treespace8 2y agoI'm just so happy to see this level of progress. This another big step for opening up space. To think that one day this will be considered normal. 150 Metric tons sent on a fully reusable rocket. Thats like a 747 to space.
- Waterluvian 2y agoIs that 150t of payload or total? What’s the cost in fuel alone (let’s ignore maintenance and operations costs for now)? I’m trying to get a feel for the relative scale compared to today’s commercial flight.
- treespace8 2y agoIt was just a quick google. 150t reusable. No idea about the other costs.
- dotnet00 2y agoThey previously threw around a number of around $1M per flight, as mostly fuel costs. Also, while 150t is the target payload capacity, the current test vehicles are closer to 50t in payload capacity, there are revisions in the pipeline based on data from these test flights which will bring it up to 150t.
- pfdietz 2y agoTo put this in perspective: at 150t/launch, if a launch is $1M, then for the cost of an SLS launch (at least $2B) Starship could launch 300,000 tons, about the mass of three Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers.
- Waterluvian 2y agoWe could use a few of those in orbit.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
- autonomousErwin 2y agoThat was crazy, 50% of me thought as it was coming in, especially as it pitched towards the tower, "they've overcompensated and are going to bring the whole tower down" but they absolutely nailed it.
- phkahler 2y agoYeah but they did pass some flame down much of the tower. Pretty quick though, probably just cleaned it with fire.
- ivanjermakov 2y agoSaving up those refurbishment costs, cleaning the tower ahead of time!
- foobarian 2y agoEven without the catch step, I always feel like their boosters are coming down way too fast way too late, with engines reigniting startlingly close to surface. Never ceases to surprise me.
- hobofan 2y agoYeah, it also always catches me off guard how late they reignite, while at the same time I'm always surprised by how slow the liftoff is even though all the boosters are on full throttle. Of course both things make sense given the respective mass at both points in the process, but given that it looks like the same rocket from the outside, a bit unintuitive.
- mshockwave 2y agoI have the same feeling watching Starship when the telemetry on the bottom right of the screen showing “0km” but landing burn hasn’t started. Later did I know that it was meant to start the burn only a few hundreds _meters_ from the ground
- 2y ago
- dmix 2y agoVideo of the catch > Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster! https://x.com/spacex/status/1845442658397049011 https://x.com/spacex/status/1845442658397049011
- aaronharnly 2y agoNaive question: I obviously expect there to be flames from the engines, but there were flames on the lower sides for quite a while after the catch – is that expected?
- thepasswordis 2y agoMy guess is that it's venting out the system pressure, and it's safer to burn it.
- sourcecodeplz 2y agowho cares... they did it and it didn't burn up or destroy the platform. rest is just nitpicking
- swarnie 2y agoOutside of maybe Boeing "who cares..." isn't a valid answer in engineering.
- sourcecodeplz 2y agoDamn what a time to be alive! Amazing
- teractiveodular 2y agoIt's difficult to overstate how important the milestone of catching the booster is. Now we have a reusable rocket an order of magnitude larger than anything we've had before, and the cost of kg to orbit just nosedived.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoI'm not sure how critical "catching" the booster is to reusability, but it does save weight by not needing legs for landing, and perhaps the booster suffers less stress this way? Note that the booster is not really being "caught" although this is the word it seems we're stuck with. It's really more like landing on the arms, since it throttles to a hover at that point.
- mshockwave 2y agoI think saving weight is definitely one of the main issues, see those proportionally large legs on Falcon-9, I guess it simply doesn't scale on bigger vehicles like Starship / Heavy booster. Also, by catching the booster on site, they can even save the transportation and do the refurbishing on site, so even shorter turnaround time I guess.
- pfdietz 2y agoAlso, saving on damage to the landing pad.
- chasd00 2y agoThat’s a good point, they used the sprinklers on landing to mitigate damage to the pad and the booster was caught well off the ground.
- cubefox 2y agoAnother way to save weight would be to make the booster out of carbon fiber instead of steel. I wonder whether they will do that eventually.
- kvakkefly 2y agoThat was soooo good!
- redserk 2y agoThe SpaceX engineers are incredible for being able to pull this off.
- themgt 2y agoNSF video: https://x.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1845442658203734384 https://x.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1845442658203734384 Truly incredible. A day for the history books.
- ghc 2y agoNothing could have prepared me for how that catch looked. I was sure the rocket was careening into the tower at the last second before it straightened out. The control algorithms must be incredible for the landing system to work within those small tolerances.
- starspangled 2y agoThat was one of the greatest things I've ever seen.
- marssaxman 2y agoLiterally brought me to tears, watching that happen.
- ellipticaldoor 2y agoCan you explain why? I don't understand why this is so important
- starspangled 2y agoI certainly can explain it, I'm just not sure I can do it in a way that you could understand. If you yell me what's one of the greatest things you have seen and why, I might be able to better relate.
- monkeydust 2y agoWatched several times, amazing stuff. Had flashbacks to playing Jupiter Landing on the C64! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Lander https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Lander Edit: SpaceX should create a simple 'catch' the rocket game. Play in browser style. Just for kicks and marketing.
- miyuru 2y ago> Edit: SpaceX should create a simple 'catch' the rocket game. Play in browser style. Just for kicks and marketing. there is, it was discussed in the FAA thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821220
- Zealotux 2y agoUuuh the first stream on YouTube was Musk giving a speech, so I was waiting for the launch but turns out it was on another stream? So I just missed the whole thing, great.
- sourcecodeplz 2y agoThey don't do lives on youtube, those are scammers. it is always on x.com
- Zealotux 2y agoWell it shows like SpaceX on mobile with 150k viewers, maybe YouTube could use some brain power to fix that.
- dotnet00 2y agoThis has been going on for many years now, YouTube doesn't do anything about it.
- lupusreal 2y agoYoutube is an incompetent organization. I've seen it take them nearly 48 hours to restore channels stolen by scammers to their rightful owners (all the while allowing the crypto scammers to continue streaming.)
- panick21_ 2y agoYoutube simply doesn't care about their platform being used for scams. There are very simply very basic things they could do, but they simply don't.
- sgt 2y agoThey're quick to demonetize people though. Anything to make an extra buck.
- acheron 2y ago
- sekai 2y agoMagnificent, it's hard to image what we'll be able to do once these do roundtrips daily. For those are not aware, that booster is 71 m (233 ft) tall!
- paulryanrogers 2y agoImprovements that make space flight more sustainable are welcome ... unless that means an order of magnitude more pollution in a less controllable form, like emissions. [Due to more frequent flights] Daily trips to space likely also mean more debris in space and falling to earth. I hope there is a balance that includes the lives of people near these sites and all of us sharing the same atmosphere.
- timeon 2y agoI hope this is not going to be used for 'Earth point A -> Earth point B' travel.
- modeless 2y agoSpaceX proposed it but I doubt there is any chance of this architecture ever achieving the airliner-level reliability needed for people to accept routine Earth-to-Earth passenger service. That's several levels beyond what you'd need to fly astronauts. Maybe a future architecture with more redundancy could get there someday.
- mr_toad 2y agoThey have a contact to investigate point to point delivery of cargo for the military.
- smoovb 2y agoProposed 7 years ago - go anywhere on earth in an hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tf2KpCG2fM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tf2KpCG2fM
- zaroth 2y ago
- joko42 2y agoHumanity has reached a milestone.
- qwertox 2y agoCongratulations to those working at SpaceX!
- delichon 2y agoI would like to shake the hands of the steeley eyed rocket men and women who just landed a skyscraper with centimeter precision. Respect. This one's for you. Hit it Perry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VJlHWESyLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VJlHWESyLI
- melodyogonna 2y agoTHEY REALLY CAUGHT IT!
- Yacovlewis 2y agoSeems impossible honestly. Like the Jetsons
- gadders 2y agoIt still blows my mind how the landings are more exciting than the launches.
- bombcar 2y agoI'm completely mind-blown that not only can they do this, but we get 1080p video for almost the whole time. What cameras do they have that can look at something 30 KM up in the air that well?
- throwaway48476 2y agoAt one time they were using gopros.
- generuso 2y agoUsually it is a small telescope on a nice motorized mount weighing a ton. NASA had several of those around Cape Canaveral [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xig3sL_rRH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xig3sL_rRH8
- yonatan8070 2y agoThe thing that impresses me even more is the kinds of cameras they mount on the rocket. How do they shield it from all the heat and debris with a material that's optically clear?
- ptek 2y agoVery inspiring, glad I woke up to watch it. Congratulations to the SpaceX team. This is what competition looks like. It’s funny how last decade SpaceX had to sue the government to get more launches.
- XorNot 2y agoThe FAA needs more funding at this point. They're not staffed for the rate of launch requests which commercial space has grown too.
- bombcar 2y agoWe're going to need a dedicated FSA (federal space agency) at this rate, which should do most of the heavy lifting (ha) for the FAA and just use them for NOTAMs and TFRs.
- mkoubaa 2y agoWhat makes you think the issue is funding?
- mptest 2y agoOh idk maybe picking up just about any recent history book? ie, the goals and effects of austerity politics?
- systemvoltage 2y agoNeed to remove regulations instead and fast track SpaceX. Every fucking time we don't need to increase the size of the Government. It only gets bigger. Never smaller.
- dawnerd 2y agoNo, launching big heavy explosive things into space shouldn’t have fewer regulations. That’s insane to think they should be able to just do it without much oversight.
- baq 2y agoCongratulations. This is a Sputnik-level event, opening a new era in the history of civilization. Amazing.
- tekla 2y agoThe catch somehow absolutely demolished the amazing FH dual landing Holy shit. I almost had a heart attack when it looked like the booster was about to slowly careen into the tower
- TacticalCoder 2y ago> I almost had a heart attack when it looked like the booster was about to slowly careen into the tower Same but it looks more dramatic on the feed we all got: on other vids the angle is different and although close it doesn't look it's going to crash into the tower. Still: feels pretty close.
- ryzvonusef 2y agoFirst attempt! I can't believe what i just saw!
- zamadatix 2y agoSpaceX has done it again! (defying status quo, not the catch :p)
- themgt 2y agoNSF video: https://x.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1845442658203734384 https://x.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1845442658203734384
- bearjaws 2y agoCouldn't watch the livestream on X because it was erroring out. We live in a world where you can't stream a video or Chromecast on X but you can catch a damn rocket...
- dylan604 2y agoX has proven time and time again that it just cannot handle live feeds well.
- doug_durham 2y agoI wouldn't bother with X. There were dozens of YouTube channels with the live feed.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 2y agoLive scams too.
- anonzzzies 2y agoThat was impressive.
- ETH_start 2y agoSpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have already revolutionized the space industry with their reusable first stage boosters and rocket engines. This advance in rocket design has resulted in the cost to launch one kilogram of payload to orbit from approximately $15,000 in the pre-SpaceX era, to around $1,400 with the Falcon Heavy. This graph shows the incredible impact of SpaceX on the volume of rocket launches, with an exponential rise in recent years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-... With Starship, SpaceX is striving to make rockets fully reusable, which, if they succeed, will transform human civilization by radically reducing launch costs and enabling large-scale space exploration and industry. The kinds of possibilities this opens up include economically viable permanent lunar bases, Mars colonization, and revolutionary industries like asteroid mining.
- dogma1138 2y agoWhen KSP becomes reality, 275 tons falling from space caught by some metal struts…
- paulsutter 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- travisporter 2y agoRyan Hansen had an incredible (although unofficial) 3d modeling video of the mechanism. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ub6HdADut50 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ub6HdADut50
- cam72cam 2y agoAbsolutely incredible achievement, I'm still shaking!
- renewiltord 2y agoThis is amazing. What an incredible technological feat!
- tayloramurphy 2y agoThis got me as excited as the original Falcon 9 landing in 2016! Now I got to share this with my kids! So incredible...
- Gud 2y agoOne of the biggest steps forward in the space industry since the first landing of Falcon 9. Great success!!
- fragmede 2y agobasically they transfer equipment from the rocket to the landing tower so that the rocket can be lighter which is why they have to catch the rocket instead of the rocket landing by itself.
- ungreased0675 2y agoWow, that’s amazing. Didn’t think something like that would be possible.
- ftio 2y agoWhat an incredible achievement. Huge congratulations to the team at SpaceX! Still have chills. Anyone know whether the fire toward the bottom of the booster during/after the catch is normal?
- nine_k 2y agoI suppose they were venting off and burning some remaining fuel in some conduits.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoLanding from space during sunrise while your rocket is on fire is as dramatic as it gets!
- bloopernova 2y agoGiddy and crying. I turned 50 yesterday and it feels a bit like the future I dreamed of as a child.
- Yacovlewis 2y agoThis made me happy
- 93po 2y agoI also cried watching this
- DarmokJalad1701 2y agoRight on target, next to their buoy! Insane achievement!
- ryzvonusef 2y agothe starship hit the target!
- t1234s 2y agoDo they recover whats left of the ship from the Indian Ocean?
- eqvinox 2y agoThey can probably go fishing, but anything that sunk is gonna stay sunk. That ocean is not shallow, and deep submarine operations are expensive…
- dotnet00 2y agoThey did pull the bottom of the previous booster out. On the webcast they mentioned adjusting the landing maneuver for the ship to be a bit softer in case they decide to recover it too.
- Klathmon 2y agoThe previous booster landed in the golf of Mexico. This starship landed in the Indian ocean a bit west of Australia, it's like 3x deeper.
- eqvinox 2y ago↑ That. For extra context: that "3× deeper" makes costs seriously explode. People do know how to engineer for that depth, but it's a lot of effort and there's pretty much no commercial market. For shallower stuff there's oil rigs, deep-sea cables, seafloor mining, even just tourism… but at some point it just peters out and only research vessels tackle the depth. (source: friend of mine works at a UK university doing deep-sea vehicles)
- RaoulP 2y ago>(source: friend of mine works at a UK university doing deep-sea vehicles) As in he works on their development? That sounds exciting, do you have something like the name of one of the vehicles?
- skrebbel 2y agoCan 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)
- jq-r 2y agoFrom what I understand, it reduces the turnover dramatically. In theory the booster should be refuelled, new second stage mounted on top and ready to go for another flight. So could cut down from weeks to days/hours. That's significant.
- Denvercoder9 2y agoIt is a rocket. The biggest difference with the Falcon 9 first stage is that this one is about 6 times as big (diameter of 9m vs 3.7m), and that catching it with the tower requires a much higher precision in landing location. The drone ships that Falcon 9 lands on are about 90 x 50 meter. To catch it with the tower, they need to be accurate to within a few meters. The big advantage of catching it with the tower is that it'll (eventually) allow them to put another Starship on top, refuel and launch again within hours, as opposed to the weeks it currently takes for Falcon 9.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoThe critical differences between Falcon 9 first stage and the Starship booster is that Starship booster lands using 3 engines rather than 1, and can throttle them down much further. 3 vs 1 gives Starship more directional control for precise landing (critical for this "catch" maneuver), and throttling allows it to hover, as it does right before the "catch".
- Denvercoder9 2y agoFalcon 9 also lands using 3 engines on its most demanding missions. The throttling is definitely an advantage.
- banku 2y agoThis is incredible!
- renewiltord 2y ago[flagged]
- WalterBright 2y ago[flagged]
- mptest 2y ago[flagged]
- WalterBright 2y ago> is a ridiculously plain falsity. It's well known in government that if you don't spend all your budget (meaning you were successful), your budget gets cut. It is indeed ridiculous, but true.
- mptest 2y agoGuess we're using different measures of "success" - in my book any govt program that nets more revenue than than it costs taxpayers or provides more value than it costs (harder to verify) (irs and usps respectively, for instance) is a "successful" program - Thus the irs is a "successful" govt program that is not getting its budget cut because it's successful, and socialist systems would still have an irs... That's kinda where I was coming from
- WalterBright 2y ago[flagged]
- mptest 2y agoThanks for the reading recommendations. Sunkara's manifesto for me is the best put case with the most brevity. I haven't read those, I've mostly read stuff like Piketty and Sunkara, or smaller more focused stuff like Zuboff's surveillance capitalism or Rifkin's green new deal , caste, Harvey's history of neoliberalism, or Hannah Arendt's work that generally rebukes capitalism more than it does fundamentally bolster the ideas of socialism - You do make me reflect I haven't read much that's meant to be anything other than stuff from my side though
- systemvoltage 2y agoCloseup of chopsticks as they were catching the booster, best clip from Everyday Astronaut's livestream: https://x.com/kagurazakimoto/status/1845447451592765820 https://x.com/kagurazakimoto/status/1845447451592765820
- renewiltord 2y agoThe SpaceX clip is better https://x.com/spacex/status/1845442658397049011?s=46 https://x.com/spacex/status/1845442658397049011?s=46
- systemvoltage 2y agoBetter than both, NSF's stream: https://x.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1845442658203734384 https://x.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1845442658203734384
- cubefox 2y agoAnd here is the most beautiful shot: https://x.com/Cosmo_556/status/1845554958604657051 https://x.com/Cosmo_556/status/1845554958604657051
- renewiltord 2y agoIt genuinely was. Thanks for that!
- systemvoltage 2y agoInsane!
- nomilk 2y agoI'd never considered a 70m tall chunk of mostly metal "agile", but the way it's controlled into the arms so precisely is something to behold.
- 2y ago
- olalonde 2y agoAnyone knows how the landing is guided? Is it just really precise GPS/altimeter or does it use computer vision?
- pfdietz 2y agoI'd imagine a combination of inertial and GPS, combined with a Kalman filter. Inertial handles short term estimation; GPS correcting drift in the inertial system. But they could roll in other information sources at the end.
- imglorp 2y agoFor the centimeterish precision needed to hover into the chopsticks, they also have the opportunity to use signals from the tower area for final alignment. I'm thinking riding a beam like aviation ILS. Just speculating but it would be easy to implement. Optical/camera alignment is probably out of the question due to fire and smoke.
- pfdietz 2y agoThe arms themselves could have sensors on them. Inductive loops sensing the presence of the stainless steel structure? Also, I doubt centimeter scale precision would be needed; the arms have some compliance in them, I'm sure, as well as the ability to control how far in they swing.
- imglorp 2y agoYeah really - it's half centimeter nav according to BG. Ctrl-f for centimeter: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/spacex-catches-returning-rocket-in-mid-air-turning-a-fanciful-idea-into-reality https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/spacex-catches-returni... Surveying GPS can do that with WAAS and a bunch of integration time and extra receivers, but not in real time: https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy So that's why I think they need to have a high resolution, close range, 3d positioning method for the final seconds.
- shirro 2y agoThey have the experience and control systems to do this reliably with Falcon 9 so it seemed doable in time but seeing it on a new vehicle on the first attempt was still surprising. Really impressive engineering.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- h2odragon 2y agoMy wife asked "Why is this a big deal?", so I gave her a link to Handmer's 2021 explanation: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st... She's not an enthusiast; she's got an impression from SciFi that going to mars shouldn't be that hard.
- moffkalast 2y agoWell I mean going to Mars isn't that hard per se, a fair few countries have done it... but carrying enough supplies and shielding to last people 2 years until the return trip and then actually getting back are way harder problems. Seeing Starship get burnthrough on these suborbital launches really shows how hard it'll be to do Mars return entry with a fair few extra km/s.
- diebeforei485 2y agoOnly the US and China have landed successfully on Mars. China achieved this in 2021. Russia/USSR tried multiple times and didn't succeed. Other countries have sent satellites to orbit around Mars, which is not the same thing.
- spacesanjeet 2y agoI think that the number of countries reaching Mars (lander or orbiter) is in single digits and thus when talking about how hard it is to reach Mars and then come back, both of the scenarios kind of hold similar weights.
- cyberax 2y ago> Russia/USSR tried multiple times and didn't succeed. Pedant mode: the USSR did land softly on Mars, but the lander got caught in a dust storm and was not able to transmit back the data ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_3 ).
- m4rtink 2y ago
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- jcgrillo 2y agoI was sure they were going to lose one of the fins at "max q part 2".. Looked like it burned through near the hinge.
- _ph_ 2y agoIf anything, the last 2 flights have shown how good a decisions it was to go with steel. The thermal reserves seem to be really large. While not as bad as with the previous flight, there was still significant leakage of hot air between the starhip and the flap. But it didn't seem to cause significant damage, at least as far as for the landing. For complete reuse, they probably have to still improve that a bit.
- honeybadger1 2y agoWhat an inspiring team SpaceX has.
- lquist 2y agoWhat does Starship reusability mean for $/kg to LEO? I know there are longer term targets of $10/kg but that supposes efficiencies that aren’t here yet. Would be helpful to understand before Starship reusability where the state of the art was in terms of $/kg to LEO and where we would be with impending Starship reusability.
- acover 2y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bgmsm9/cost_per_kg_to_leo_of_various_launch_vehicles/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bgmsm9/cost_...
- augusto-moura 2y agoI don't think we have a number for it yet. But it will definitely be the cheapest launch system at the time of launch. People say 200$/kg just with booster reuse, and 20$/kg with full reuse. Of course this might be too optimistic, but I truly believe we might reach under 50$ in this decade.
- quotemstr 2y agoEven $50 is within "going to the moon for my honeymoon" range. Wow.
- augusto-moura 2y ago$50 is a number for LEO (Low-earth orbit). $/kg to a Moon orbit (or flyby) might be significantly more expensive. Not only that, because it is further so it needs more fuel, but also it is a few days trip which would need a bunch more kilos in provisioning food, water and other things. So yeah, unfortunately not that cheap to have a honeyMoon in the moon (heh) There is a lot of possibilities to make a trip to the moon cheaper though. If we make LEO that cheap, we can build a lot of infrastructure in the space that would make the tourism to moon more affordable. Like keeping a few starships always in orbit as some kind of space-hotel-metro system. This will probably take a few more decades, though.
- max_ 2y agoAt this point I am finding it hard to hate Elon Musk. For everything he does that has annoyed me (like Gloating at people being bombed in the middle east) — his business acumen has completely unlocked for people what they we thought was impossible.
- sbuttgereit 2y agoPeople are complex. This is nuance. There should be nothing wrong with recognizing that any individual is a mix of things you're going to like and things you're not. That could be judged all the way to a mix of things which are morally correct, amoral, or immoral... but the reality is probably a mix. It should be OK to praise the guy for those good traits and in turn to criticize the guy for what he does wrong: both in turn calling out the specific actions and less "the person". Its rare that demonizing someone is really appropriate or anything other than self-serving and we should see those that make that effort in that light.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoCompletely agree. But regardless of if we criticize or praise. He is gossip worthy. Going from being in a Marvel Movie as the architype of Iron Man, all the good things he has done, to recently jumping around at a rally of a madman, and kind of looking nuts himself. It does beg comparison to the typical evil genius. He could literally be a villain from a Bond Movie, funding Specter. It's all fun and games. But just on surface, it is hard not to talk about him. He embodies too many sci-fi tropes. On days like today, that was amazing to see. I'd like to think all the bad is overblown.
- nemo44x 2y agoYes he’s amazing and we’re lucky to live in a time and place where he can lead thousands of people that can do these things. He’s an example of what’s possible by a capitalist and how capitalism empowers individuals to shape the world and make it better for everyone. So naturally there’s a group of people trying to stop him due to envy and other copes.
- 2y ago
- fumeux_fume 2y ago[flagged]
- rexreed 2y agoSounds like you didn't live through the Microsoft product launches of the late 1990s. Developers, developers, developers, developers. Same stuff, different day. You might enjoy this reminiscent remix, which also features a SpaceX-ish rocket as well (not bad foresight for a video created in 2009): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRm0NDo1CiY&t=106 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRm0NDo1CiY&t=106
- panick21_ 2y agoSo funny that they had a little buoy water ready to film the explosion. I want to see the views of that camera from the landing itself.
- seydor 2y agoNow we have no excuses
- metalman 2y agoanybody not watching these live better be delivering a baby,or saving someones life its a very short list of things that should take precidence over what are the most astounding things happening for our species,ever
- nebben64 2y agoWhat is the object beside the rocket at 37:49 to 38:02 ? Is that debris ? It seems to be falling with, then away from the rocket. (it looks like a small glowing ring to the right)
- kevinmhickey 2y agoIt’s the hot staging spacing ring. They didn’t call it on the feed but it is an expendable part that ejects after separation.
- nebben64 2y agothank you!
- Alex-Programs 2y agoHotstaging was added quite late so they need to jettison in order to land, but it should be permanently integrated in the later variants.
- nebben64 2y agointeresting, thank you for the extra info
- skizm 2y agoThis was insanely cool to watch. And on the first try! As a complete lay person with little to no physics knowledge: what stops the use of something dumb like a parachute, or even wings and landing gear, to "land" the booster? I assume it is impractical (since they don't do it), but what are the actual particulars that stop it from working? While super cool to watch, it seems crazy that plucking it out of the air like that is the best way to preserve the booster for reuse.
- ackbar03 2y agophysics?
- throw4950sh06 2y agoAt the very least, reducing the number of concerns on the rocket is definitely worthwhile. They are going to have an engine in any case, and using just that and nothing else on the rocket itself simplifies testing and reduces risk. The tower can have a separate testing and there's no way something that happens on the way to orbit and back breaks the tower. Wings, parachute, etc... All very easy to break or burn at hypersonic speeds, and very chaotic to control. It probably (very probably) wouldn't be possible to land back exactly where the rocket launched on wings or chutes - that would probably need an extremely long and wide runway, but compare the size of Starship to the Space Shuttle... It's like braking a toy car vs braking an actual truck.
- Veedrac 2y agoThe Starship second stage is surprisingly not all that heavy compared to the 78t Shuttle orbiter dry mass, despite the many-fold difference in volume and payload, plus Starship needing to be a legitimate second stage rather than just an orbiter.
- ivandenysov 2y agoIt mostly comes down to reducing extra weight. You have to carry those wings and landing gear upwards, which reduces useful payload weight. But having the booster right where it started also helps with reusability. No need to transport the booster from a landing strip back to the starting table
- georgeburdell 2y agoSpaceX has unbaked bread
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zeristor 2y agoI went to follow this on the SpaceX YouTube channel since it is usually closer to real time. It seems someone hijacked and played a video of the previous launch. Just as we got to launch time it cut to a fake badly dubbed speech by Elon Musk going on about Bitcoin, with a handy QR code. This was a bit confusing but since it was 10 minutes in advance I managed to switch to another channel. Still amazing, even if the video glitched at the key capture point. And an hour later the Starship itself re entered to soft salty sea landing. I don’t know how many prototype runs they need to do, I’m guessing they could stuff a shed load of Starlinks into the next one.
- tofuahdude 2y agoSounds like you were on a scam, fake version of the channel.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sbuttgereit 2y agoYou need to look closely at the channel name in a URL and not just the branding signals on the page itself (logos, "presentation name"), etc. What you'll find is that the on-page channel name can be made pretty much anything as well as logos, banner's etc. But when you look at a URL that leads to the channel page, it's not the same and it doesn't have the verification check. There is a real SpaceX channel: https://www.youtube.com/spacex https://www.youtube.com/spacex Note that it's just "spacex" and does have the verification mark. Also, SpaceX doesn't stream anything there (anymore): it's all just promotional videos... some of them are cool, but that's all they are. Nothing real-time. SpaceX only streams on X now, so I'd recommend one of the third party Youtube channels like https://www.youtube.com/@NASASpaceflight https://www.youtube.com/@NASASpaceflight (which isn't NASA) if you'd prefer to stick to Youtube for such things.
- zeristor 2y agoThis was on the YouTube appleTV app
- jader201 2y agoCan I hijack this thread for an almost completely unrelated question that I have observed in nearly every simulation of movement in space, even from sources like NASA and SpaceX which “should know better”? And I’m mostly asking this out of scientific curiosity, not as a criticism. Why do they always portray movement in space by showing stars moving past the view at variable rates, or even at all? The opening screen of this video while you’re waiting for the feed to start shows stars moving that seem to be only feet away, and only a few inches in diameter. Like little orbs of light just passing outside the window. Isn’t this highly unrealistic, for even extremely fast travel in space? I would imagine at most you would see very slow movement of a very static field of stars. But every depiction in sci-fi, video games, and other simulations like in this video insist on making it seem like space is full of tiny 6-12” stars floating only feet away from each other. Is there any explanation where this could actually be considered realistic that I’m not thinking of? I’m just a lowly software engineer, so my expertise in this area is null. But from a basic understanding of stars and physics, this seems unrealistic. Admittedly, I guess it wouldn’t be very exciting to view movement in space in a way that I’m imagining would be realistic, and maybe that’s the only explanation there is/needs to be. But I guess I’m thinking that there would be enough people at SpaceX (for example) to scream “this is not even close to realistic!” for something like that to not make it to production, even if it is more exciting to watch.
- KoolKat23 2y agoIf they were truthful, you'd think the picture was frozen, signal issues etc.
- herval 2y agoI’m guessing when making an artistic depiction of something going very fast in space, that sort of parallax helps? The goal of consumer content (including the ones by spacex) isn’t to be realistic, it’s to entertain That said, “the expanse” is an exception here - they make it look as realistic as possible, including the battles where ships don’t even see each other. Stars barely move on it too
- andrewflnr 2y agoYou're correct, it's hilariously unrealistic (IIRC requires actual superluminal speed), but people have been conditioned to accept it by various scifi media.
- kylecordes 2y agoIn addition to the other ways this is incredible, it is a stunning achievement in software development.
- interludead 2y agoThe video looks like it's being played in reverse
- cs702 2y agoAwesome. Incredible. Inspiring. Words fail me. Heartfelt congratulations to the folks at SpaceX!
- goodgrief99 2y agoWhy don't they mount moving video cameras? I mean, the second part of the fly is pretty boring. They shows us a view from 2 static cameras. Is it so difficult to make one camera moving? With 360 degrees view. Show us the shape of the earth the full circle, show us the moon. Is it so hard?
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoYes what you’re describing is nearly impossible.
- _flux 2y agoI don't think they'd need to actually have moving cameras (I think this is what the poster meant) to give a 360 degree view, but 360 degree cameras (well, 180 because they're right next to an obstacle) that could be reprojected to 2d.
- lutorm 2y agoThe primary purpose of having those cameras is to gather test data, not provide entertainment.
- temptemptemp111 2y ago[dead]
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoDoes each engine have 6 degree of freedom to point its jet?
- lpribis 2y agoNo, each individual engine has 2 DoF (x-axis and y-axis rotation) which correspond to torque on x and y plane to the rocket. They need to use more than one at once (three in starship's case) pointing in different directions to get z axis torque.
- bjamesking 2y agoI was watching a youtube stream with tens of thousands of viewers and 20 seconds before launch it switched to an AI generated video of Elon on stage talking about his "crypto currency program". It was so well executed and generated, it nearly felt real. The violent anger I felt and still feel for scammers has ruined my day.
- mlindner 2y agoThey do this every launch unfortunately. Youtube seems completely inept at stopping them. They make enough money to hire hundreds of thousands of fake accounts to subscribe.
- macintux 2y agoMusk choosing to abandon YouTube to push his other company didn’t help.
- sebzim4500 2y agoTrue, but even before that there were fake spacex streams (complete with a 'verified account' symbol) with 10k+ alleged viewers.
- ivewonyoung 2y agoThese are reruns.
- jvm___ 2y agoThey run even on daya when there's no launch or Elon presentation, I've watched one because I thought I missed some announcement.
- alceta 2y agoSame here. I was actively showing the (scammed) live stream to my 4yo daughter, and had to switch back to the live version for yet another 10minutes of wait. Quite the embarassment, I think I begin to understand how my parents feel when they are completely unaware of some technical aspects I try to explain, and how easy it would be to scam them. Seems like it is getting easier to scam me, too. To be fair, once they switched to Fakelon, it was quite clear. But I started the same stream again later as the YT app does not properly highlight the channel's name before clicking.
- VohuMana 2y agoWow, I knew they were going to try to catch the booster this time but I really didn’t think it was going to work on the first try, I was just hoping they didn’t destroy the launch tower in the process. Congrats to the SpaceX team, absolutely amazing! Hope y’all are celebrating
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- beambot 2y agoHighlights in a YouTube video: https://youtu.be/b28zbsnk-48?si=JamDRMuN07oWlcZi https://youtu.be/b28zbsnk-48?si=JamDRMuN07oWlcZi
- BurningFrog 2y agoDo we know how much more efficient/cheaper landing by booster catch is compared to landing on a platform?
- malfist 2y agoIt's not just cheaper, it's preserving capacity. Every pound of landing gear you carry has to be offset with fuel to lift it, and then that fuel has to have fuel to lift it and on and on.
- rhegart 2y agoCoolest video by far, but this still places 3rd for me behind F9’s first landing, and the dual heavy landing. The future is bright!
- agumonkey 2y agoSpaceX is really incredible in how regular the improvements are coming. Something in their structure is well balanced.
- bamboozled 2y agoIt has to be Elon, he is focusing a lot of energy on the company right now.
- fabrice_d 2y ago[flagged]
- bamboozled 2y ago[flagged]
- agumonkey 2y agoI wonder when he stopped having any value at his companies ("if ever" might add some)
- bamboozled 2y agoIt's hard to tell, I really can't believe the guy I see on TV lately has anything to do with any of this stuff, kind of makes me wonder if he is even real. It's a really unfortunate situation in my opinion.
- bloopernova 2y agoI wonder if we'll ever know the truth of what happened to him? He seemed to lose a large part of his outward filter since the joe rogan "elon smokes pot!" interview.
- WalterBright 2y ago
- la64710 2y ago[flagged]
- briandw 2y agoImagine the number of amazing space telescopes that we are going to get! When it's cheep to launch a 10m diameter object into space, so many possibilites open up.
- _ph_ 2y agoFor things like that, they could build special versions of the star ship which remain in orbit as the housing. They would need no flaps, no tiles, just the 6 engines and the fuel tank. The body of the starship itself would be the telescopes tube.
- Teever 2y agoYou could do that, you could also use it to transport pieces of massive telescope arrays that self assemble in space.
- _ph_ 2y agoSure, thats what they did with the JWST. But that ist complex and expensive. A custom Starship could be the cheapest way to get telescopes up to 9m mirror size into space as you can assemble everything on the ground and you don't need a separate housing.
- TyrianPurple 2y ago"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." and what we have witnessed is magic.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jeswin 2y agoSpeaking as a non-American. SpaceX just made one of the most significant technological leaps in the last decade. This is obviously hugely significant in many ways, including retaining the US military edge. Yet the US administration hasn't congratulated SpaceX. Incredible.
- stetrain 2y agohttps://x.com/SenBillNelson/status/1845461454977196294 https://x.com/SenBillNelson/status/1845461454977196294
- abathur 2y agoWhat counts? The current head NASA admin (a political appointee) did it a few hours ago and it's retweeted on the official @NASA account. (not linking as peer comment already did)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dtquad 2y agoThere 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.
- stetrain 2y ago[flagged]
- cruffle_duffle 2y ago[flagged]
- stetrain 2y agoThis was “actual facts” that came to light later? https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960?lang=en https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960?lang=en
- robwwilliams 2y agoAwesome achievement. Watched it with my sister at home and brought back memories from the 60s in front of the B&W TV watching some of the early amazing flights and landings. Question for hackers: How does this reorient space programs world-wide? If I were a politician or technocrat in China, Russia, or the EU this would feel like an inverse and intense Sputnik moment — “holy sh—- we have to up our game!”
- carabiner 2y agoIn Europe, ESA has been pretty open about trying to copy and play catch-up to SpaceX: > Q: Callisto looks very much like Grasshopper, the SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage reuse prototype. > A: Callisto is Grasshopper. The Chinese are also building a similar prototype, I have no problem saying we didn’t invent anything. https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of-launchers-talks-reusable-rockets/ https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of...
- creer 2y agoEventually it convinces everybody that "quantity in space" is possible. Moving to projects where you don't have to count every ounce. It opens the path to wild schemes, in amount of weight that could be moved. And why "eventually"? SpaceX should have already convinced people of that. Yeah it's not yet in production, but the momentum and progress have been amazing to witness. (The previous one was convincing everyone that there was lots of space for tech improvement. Wake up call achieved just a few years ago also by SpaceX.) See also this blog post: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st...
- creer 2y agoAn interesting question (because all the others will probably be too slow) is what does that change for SpaceX itself (which can be fast)? It gets to complete and upgrade Starlink. Sure. And that keeps it busy for what? Two years? At most. Sure. Done. Just kidding, that provides some background launches as a guaranteed customer going forward. But nowhere near enough to make a dent in what will be the new SpaceX launch capabiity. So what else can it do, that exploits its own launch capability? Going to Mars is not an obvious commercial venture - not at first - not until some government somewhere convinces itself to fund that. So what else? What can SpaceX do on its own with this launch capability?
- perlgeek 2y agoDuring/before the water landing of Ship, the telemetry indication for the rocket motors stayed off. Does that mean the landing burn was unsuccessful? Or was that just a glitch in the telemetry?
- stetrain 2y agoIn the video you can see the engines light (reflecting off the metal control flap and water) and the ship make a soft touchdown on the water. It then tips over and the tanks pop from the force of smacking the water sideways. So the landing burn seems to have been a success.
- sebzim4500 2y agoIt's weird, that happened last time too so you'd think if it was a glitch they would have fixed it.
- FergusArgyll 2y agoThe joy on the faces of all the employees is infectious, congrats!
- gyre007 2y agoIncredible achievement, my American friends! Congrats! We, Europeans, can only feel jealous, but hey at least we have free [but comically broken and dysfunctional] healthcare, so, there's that. I hope you'll bring a lot more progress to humankind beyond space exploration!
- mrandish 2y agoThe long-term goal is becoming a multi-planet species, so in that context it's not about countries. Go Earth! (also, while NASA has been generally helpful to SpaceX's efforts, American FAA bureaucrats have managed to inject unnecessary delays and uncertainty into the process (in addition to some necessary delays).
- yborg 2y agoAmazing achievement, but also reminds me that what NASA and its contractors accomplished during the 1960s still stands with current day systems engineering. The 3rd Saturn V launch put three men into orbit around the Moon. The 6th landed two of them there.
- h_tbob 2y agoWe live in a day and age where it seems that all the innovations we see now are new tech that has to do with electronics. Good to see some good ol hardware breakthroughs in another industry.
- dang 2y ago[stub for offtopicness]
- tbone902 2y ago[flagged]
- dogma1138 2y agoGiven the proliferation of ballistic missiles that’s not a bad thing…
- forgot-im-old 2y ago[flagged]
- throw4950sh06 2y agoIt's about time. Not sure why people present it like it's a bad thing.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoThe conclusion doesn’t seem to follow? It assumes that decision makers elsewhere in the world can’t get forewarning. But it’s impossible to hide any project development on that scale from spies, or even just plain corruption, so now that decision makers across the world know that at least the launch mechanisms are possible… the moment such program preparations are detected on a scale that can’t be explained away as noise will result in them activating every panic button they have.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- forgot-im-old 2y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
- busymom0 2y agoDoes anyone know what this circular thing is at 5:36 mark in the below video under the booster? It's like a piece which separated and keeps falling off. https://i.imgur.com/z6PH2Jw.png https://i.imgur.com/z6PH2Jw.png https://youtu.be/b28zbsnk-48?t=336 https://youtu.be/b28zbsnk-48?t=336
- hnpolicestate 2y agoThis is why Musk is silly when he claims fear over what certain possible gov administrations would do to him if elected. He's allowed to believe whatever he wants. He's too valuable to the United States. Imagine what a BRICS country would pay for his talent? Worth his weight in gold wrapped platinum.
- georgeburdell 2y agoIt’s justified. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-11/la-me-spacex-coastal-commission https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-11/la-me-sp...
- ChuckMcM 2y agoPretty 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 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. 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. Engineering it to be strong enough to land on water would presumably compromise the cargo to orbit number. The use of Starlink was really interesting. The ability to get live video for the entire re-entry is pretty game changing for engineering. I'd guess there are even more 'views' than they showed (there would be if I were running things :-)) but overall that capability is something that really helps evaluate the changes made. I can easily imagine that flight 6 will be nominal end to end without any unintended damage. That would enable, perhaps, one of their 'massive' Starlink missions to test cargo delivery. It will also start to give us some better numbers on exactly how much cargo Starship can put in orbit in 'full reuse' mode which is essential if they want to create a fueling station on orbit for the Artemis program. Again, hats off to engineering at SpaceX, y'all did good.
- nordsieck 2y ago> 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 unintended damage. I think it depends on what you mean by "nominal". SpaceX ultimately wants to catch the 2nd stage as well. I suspect that they are a ways off of that, since it would have to approach over land. The FAA is going to need to have very high confidence that it will do exactly what it's designed to do before they're going to allow that.
- ro_bit 2y agoThe catch looks amazing, but one thing I don't understand is why SpaceX needs the technology to catch a booster they've already demonstrated the ability to land boosters on barges. Is the arm more cost effective to scale compared to a barge?
- mlyle 2y agoThe argument is that you don't need to spend the vehicle mass on legs, so you get performance. On the other hand, I imagine you could wipe out any benefits to $/mass launched pretty quickly by blowing up the tower.
- msk-lywenn 2y agoMaybe the goal is to refill and relaunch immediately?
- slashdave 2y agoThis. You can lower the rocket back on the launch base, refill, and launch again within hours.
- cubefox 2y agoAfter checking if everything is okay with the vehicle. And of course the government agencies must determine that frequent sonic booms (there is one per booster landing) are acceptable for the public.
- valine 2y agoThe landing legs are heavy. SpaceX would rather have more payload than carry legs to space on every launch. Also landing on the launch pad means you don’t have to transport the rocket. Just have the arms set it down and you’re ready to launch again.
- _djo_ 2y agoThis booster is much, much larger than the Falcon 9 first stages that land on barges. It's ~70 metres high, versus ~40 metres for the Falcon 9 first stage, and weighs about 275 000 kg compared to the ~20 000 kg of the Falcon 9 first stage. In short, it would require such huge and heavy landing legs and landing barges that it probably wouldn't be feasible.
- gramie 2y agoWhen I was visiting the space center in Huntsville, Indiana, I had a chance to talk with one of the volunteers. His name was Brooks Moore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3hudRA3yL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3hudRA3yL8), and he had been the director of navigation systems for the Apollo (and other) projects. The first SpaceX barge landing had just taken place, and I asked him what he thought. He got a faraway look in his eyes, and agreed that it had been spectacular. For those guys, it must have seemed like all of their dreams were coming true.
- robbiet480 2y agoI believe you meant Huntsville, Alabama?
- gramie 2y agoAh yes, that's right. Don't know where Indiana came from!
- atlgator 2y agoNothing short of inspiring. Moving humanity forward. Well done to the SpaceX team.
- ramshanker 2y agoOk. I will admit this. SpaceX Engineering is making me feel regret for not choosing Aerospace Engineering back in Undergrad. Oh well, That Tower is almost within Civil-Structural Engineering.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cubefox 2y agoHere is Scott Manley's summary and analysis of flight 5: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ysx4t7ICO58 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ysx4t7ICO58
- Yacovlewis 2y agoPeople on earth are experiencing the Jetsons and the Flinstones at the same time
- 1shooner 2y agoThis 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.
- altcognito 2y agoThe launching of Starlink will absolutely improve the quality of internet to underserved countries and rural areas. Quality internet is a game changer.
- Yacovlewis 2y agoAgreed. 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
- lurking_swe 2y agobetter weather forecasting (launching and replacing the existing old satellites) seems useful. starlink has already been a game changer in communities experiencing natural disasters and is now coming to commercial airplanes. so there’s something at least. :)
- grecy 2y agoDriving 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”
- mk_stjames 2y ago
- Yacovlewis 2y agoBased on this conversation, how many of y'all are actual rocket scientists? I'm blown away by the expertise in some of these comments
- aksss 2y agoAnd here I was blown away by the ignorance of many of the questions. Why no landing legs? Why is this more impressive than the other rocket landings? What’s the thingy that fell off during separation? Sometimes I need to remind myself that other people have lives, I guess. XD
- startupsfail 2y ago[flagged]
- mciancia 2y agoWhy?
- olddog2 2y agoIf elon can do everything he’s done with an increasingly hostile govt, imagine what he’ll be able to so with a supportive one
- ProcNetDev 2y ago[flagged]
- profmarshmellow 2y ago[flagged]
- zenerdiodes 2y ago[flagged]
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoTrump is pro big oil, not electric, so Tesla wouldn't be getting any more favors/subsidies under Trump, and with all the NASA money currently flowing to SpaceX, no strings attached, I doubt they would benefit from Trump either. Money coming from Trump will always be conditional on him getting something back.
- mft_ 2y agoI don’t disagree with your overall point, but I’m sure there are significant strings attached to the money from NASA. Like, successfully launching lots of things into space for them. And developing a new human-rated space capsule, giving the US and NASA that capability again after a long time relying on Russia. And developing a totally new rocket system, together with a version that can take NASA back to the moon.
- robotnikman 2y agoThe engineers at spaceX are amazing, and I'll admit I envy their tenacity and genius. The amount of progress we have seen in rocketry and space travel in the last decade is mind blowing, I never thought I would see this in my lifetime. Edit: Decided to give it a shot and applied for a backend software engineering position at SpaceX. I'm not sure if it will be noticed, but its worth a shot. I may not be a rocket scientist, but it would be great to contribute using the knowledge I do have.
- supportengineer 2y agoWe could have had this all along.
- ceejayoz 2y agoEh, maybe. There’s a lot of computing and telemetry going on that benefits from the last twenty years of miniaturization and performance. The iPhone seemed impossible when announced to BlackBerry; tech has gone crazy fast.
- collinmanderson 2y agoIt’s a lot easier to model and simulate too.
- Teever 2y agoYou should take a look at what Von Braun was planning for the Saturn V by the mid 1970s. IIRC they were talking about 100+ Apollo launches to get a real space station, moon base, and expedition missions to Mars by 1980 and with that would have come a real drive to innovate and improve on the Saturn V. Without the computational power that we take for granted today they would have definitely brute forced their way to elegant solutions and got somewhere close to where we are by the mid 90s. This would have lead to tremendous innovations in solar panels, batteries, and metallurgy much sooner than we ended up getting to them. Instead we chose a different path and made ourselves completely dependent on oil.
- geepytee 2y agoI just quit my job at a SaaS. What am I doing with my life... The SpaceX team just caught the biggest rocket in history with a giant arm, we all need to dream bigger!
- philipwhiuk 2y agohttps://x.com/mytechceoo/status/1845573520035577925 https://x.com/mytechceoo/status/1845573520035577925
- efxhoy 2y agoStrategically 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.
- baw-bag 2y agoPutting zero payload into space?
- qaq 2y agoWell if US would deploy global kinetic bombardment system that would def. be a game changer.
- polemic 2y agoTo 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.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y agoa 20 foot long Tungston rod hitting at 10km/s would release 416 gigajoules of energy. Pretty much a small nuclear bomb or about 100 tons of TNT. It's impossible to intersept something going 10km/s.
- vl 2y agoBut 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.
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- WalterBright 2y agoAs an ME/AE, I can say this is an astounding engineering achievement. And on the first try! Well done, SpaceX!
- ipsocannibal 2y ago[flagged]
- iwaztomack 2y agoWhat 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.
- valine 2y agoAll of it can be reused. Their plan is for the tower to set the booster back down and immediately relaunch it.
- nine_k 2y agoEverything except the stage connector ring (which uses pyro bolts I believe) should be directly reusable, after an inspection, light brushing, and refueling / recharging. Maybe the bottom uses some ablative material, then a new coat of it needs to be applied / attached. All the internals should have enough resource for likely dozens of launches, if Falcon-9 is any indication.
- slimebot80 2y agoThe 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.
- bottlepalm 2y agoElon 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 Elon didn't make many decisions along the way in the design and development of both Starship, the launch towers and everything else. The point is, Elon deserves a hell of a lot of credit along with everyone else. Everyone has their part to play in the success of the mission.
- slimebot80 2y agoCorrect, and that's why NASA outsourced funding. Because if NASA risked billions on "crazy ideas" they'd get shut down, being a government agency. No point pretending it's all Elon.
- bottlepalm 2y agoYou’re pretending if you think anyone but Elon would approve building a massive launch tower with chopstick arms to catch what is essentially an incoming bomb.
- caeril 2y ago[flagged]
- TMWNN 2y ago>The media needs to stop blindly attributing this to "Elon Musk". Musk's biographer tweeted the pages from his book <https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942 https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942> discussing how in late 2020 Musk suggested, then insisted against considerable opposition from his engineers, that Superheavy be caught with chopsticks instead of landing on legs like Falcon 9. (If this sounds familiar, also according to the book, Musk is the person who suggested and, against considerable opposition from his engineers, insisted on Starship switching to stainless steel instead of carbon fiber. Hint: Musk was right and his engineers were wrong. Both times.)
- animal_spirits 2y agoWhat does this mean for the Kessler syndrome? Does reusable rockets speed up our potential for lock-in or slow it down?
- 93po 2y agoI am absolutely flabbergasted at this. Wow. Jesus christ.
- atleastoptimal 2y agoWhy 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?
- neom 2y agoIsn't BlueOrigin going after at totally different market segment, I thought it was focused on things like space tourism and more "space base" type stuff? Also pretty sure BlueOrigin is almost all funded by Jeff B, SpaceX has a lot of external funding and focused on tangible markets vs just "people will want to do stuff in space" - I think it was only very recently they started to work with NASA.
- skissane 2y ago> Isn't BlueOrigin going after at totally different market segment, I thought it was focused on things like space tourism They have New Shepard, a crew-rated suborbital spacecraft, primarily targeted at tourism, but it has also done some science payloads for NASA, university and commercial clients. But they also are doing a lot of non-tourism stuff: they designed and manufacture first stage engines for ULA’s new Vulcan launch vehicle; they have their own reusable orbital launch vehicle (New Glenn) due to launch soon (planned for next month, but might slip to early next year); they have a contract with NASA to build a lunar lander to compete with SpaceX’s; they are part of one of the teams NASA has chosen to compete for the contract to build a commercial ISS replacement. And SpaceX is involved in space tourism too: both directly, and indirectly via resellers such as Axiom. It is just that the most publicly noticeable thing Blue Origin has achieved is space tourism, which makes people think it is primarily a space tourism company; meanwhile, SpaceX has had numerous publicly visible achievements other than tourism, so people view tourism as just another thing they do, not their main thing.
- thisisthenewme 2y agoWhy 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.
- dools 2y agoCode name: Danielsan.
- TechSquidTV 2y agoI grew up playing Halo, and this was purely fiction at that point.
- iamgopal 2y agoI don’t understand, the starship has to stand on something, and what ever that is in contact with ( arm or barge or land or whatever ) , needs to be as heavy, how they are saving weight ?
- seany62 2y agoUnbelievable. Amazing.
- modeless 2y agoUpdate: SpaceX has set the booster back down on the launch mount and reconnected the "quick disconnect" hoses that fill it with propellant before launch. If they refilled it with propellant they'd be close to launching it again! Presumably they will be draining it instead. Apparently the rails that catch the booster can translate in and out relative to the "chopstick" arms so the booster can be positioned and rotated to match the launch mount after landing.
- cryptonector 2y agoThis is a very important update. Where would we find out more about this? Was this in a YouTube video somewhere?
- pfdietz 2y agoI wonder if they recover the helium used to pressurize the propellant tanks.
- ziofill 2y agoWhat is the advantage of catching the booster vs letting it touch down?
- fnord77 2y agoI still think the Space Shuttle was more impressive.
- zer0c00ler 2y ago[dead]
- smoovb 2y agoNow go back 7 years and watch the proposal for 1 hour flight anywhere in the world - https://youtu.be/2tf2KpCG2fM?si=EfDUcL4x7MpGt51C&t=27 https://youtu.be/2tf2KpCG2fM?si=EfDUcL4x7MpGt51C&t=27
- wojciii 2y agoThis chopstick catch was really impressive. I had my money on them managing it the first time. I haven't been so excited since the dual landing of their Falcon 9 boosters.
- gzer0 2y agoAn incredible achievement. I'm honored to be part of this moment in history.
- 0x1ceb00da 2y agoIf twitter is x, does that mean spacex is space twitter? Twitter was rebranded after elon bought it.
- belter 2y agoAnother great view: https://youtu.be/Vzyaud250Xo https://youtu.be/Vzyaud250Xo
- iamsanteri 2y agoAfter watching this the project of changing brakes on my old car doesn't feel like that big of a project anymore.
- sgu999 2y agoDoes 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
- ugh123 2y agoDo we know if there was a test payload?
- jvesalius 2y agoYes, there was none.
- throwaway2037 2y agoSorry for the newbie rocket question: Blast off happens around 33:00 in that video. The rocket appears to be vertically still (does not move) for the first 4 to 4.5 seconds. Is it held in place, or are not enough engines burning (yet) to induce take-off?
- patall 2y agoWhile I cannot say if it moves immediately, it definitely moves within 2 seconds. It does not appear to move because it is so massive at more than 100 meters.
- isolli 2y agoQuestion I can't find the answer to anywhere: considering that SpaceX already had other ways of re-using boosters, why are they doing this? Is it to explore more options? Or because it's faster to re-use the booster if it's already in place? Were the other approaches not satisfactory, perhaps? Or no longer applicable due to size?
- melodyogonna 2y agoFirst because the rocket is lighter without landing legs. Second because they're aiming for rapid reusability, they want to tower to catch the rocket, lower it to the launch mount, and get another Starship stacked on it.
- fragmede 2y agomass that's on the tower that was moved to the rocket is no longer on the rocket, which means the rocket can carry more fuel/payload. hence the tower catching the rocket instead of the rocket having heavy landing gear.
- alexeijaz 2y agoHi
- cahaya 2y agoGreat launch! Would be nice if the starship itself would be landing on the chopsticks next time and land during day time instead of dark Australia.
- mentos 2y agoCrazy that the chop stick catch was originally eye rolled by the engineers and then when he pushed for it they realized he was serious.
- bowsamic 2y agoVery difficult to enjoy with all the screaming
- isthatafact 2y agoFor some reason, the spacex screams sound nightmarishly terrifying to me.
- bowsamic 2y agoMy feeling exactly, doesn't sound like enjoyment screaming but like total hysteria
- hcks 2y ago[flagged]
- stetrain 2y agoSo you don't consider Elon Musk to be part of the engineering team at SpaceX?
- irunmyownemail 2y ago[flagged]
- rndmize 2y agoHe's being sarcastic because the standing theme on the internet for most of the last decade is that Musk is an idiot who only got where he is because his parents are rich or he stole from other smarter/harder working people. SpaceX tends to put a hole in this idea since he founded and funded it himself, and they've made more progress in space travel in the last two decades than all existing government organizations and contractors have since the 70s.
- electriclove 2y agoThe people that dislike Musk (or are afraid of the mob that will go after them if they say something positive about him) can’t deny the amazing things he is accomplishing and so when anything good happens, they are quick to farm karma with thanking and congratulating everyone who isn’t Musk. It is intentional.
- UltraSane 2y agoThe contrast between SpaceX's success at creating reusable rockets and Tesla's failure at FSD is pretty stark.
- philipwhiuk 2y agoTo be honest FSD is way harder. The platform doesn't occasionally have a road closure sign or a new traffic light or a guy unloading his van or an emergency vehicle with its hazards on. Don't get me wrong the engineering and physics are crazy ugly, but it's at least consistent within a range. Humans are messy, unpredictable, unreliable and chaotic.
- abustamam 2y agoThis is truly an amazing feat! Congratulations to the SpaceX team. Can someone explain to me exactly WHY it's such a big deal though? Like subjectively I can see it's incredible but while watching the video there were enormous applauses at points I knew were a big deal but I lacked the understanding of physics to truly appreciate.
- chadhutchins10 2y agoFor humans to have any reasonable presence somewhere else in our solar system (moon, mars, etc.) we need the ability to launch tons (literally tons) of stuff to orbit and to the destination. and we need to launch it often to do anything in a reasonable amount of time. the only way to do that is to make reusable launch systems. SpaceX's Falcon 9 has aced that for satellites (see Starlink and everything else they've launched). The Starship launch system is capable of launching a significantly larger payload, ~20 times more. What they demonstrated yesterday is that a launch system that is capable of getting us anywhere in the solar system can be reusable. Huge accomplishment.
- Fin_Code 2y agoThe current Falcon rocket always expends a stage and lands a stage. Starship will land both stages. Also Starship is far larger and in rocketry there is something called the square cube law that means bigger is better. So its far more efficient. That leads to far cheaper mass to orbit costs.
- cryptonector 2y agoIn order to land not just the first stage but also the second stage more fuel will have to be carried on the ascent phase just to enable the recovery phase. This then necessitates weight savings elsewhere to avoid payload to orbit being cut way back. SpaceX chose to remove the landing system from both, the first and second stages (both because, after all if you can eliminate the landing system from one stage then you can eliminate it from the other). This and other weight savings will enable high payload to orbit in a fully reusable launch platform. Landing without legs requires something like this catch system -- something never done before, and clearly very difficult to do.
- diamondfist25 2y ago[flagged]
- nottorp 2y agoJust to nitpick, perhaps it would be nicer to have a link that has the info visible without a login... Random link with the actual 10 minutes of magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b28zbsnk-48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b28zbsnk-48
- annesashikata2 2y ago[dead]