3 ms·

Do they recover whats left of the ship from the Indian Ocean?

by t1234s 2y ago

eqvinox 2y ago
They 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 ago
  They 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 ago
    The 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?
        eqvinox 2y ago
        > As in he works on their development? Yes, she works on their development. > That sounds exciting, do you have something like the name of one of the vehicles? No vehicle name, but this is the university department/lab: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/research/facilities/maritime-robotics-instrumentation-laboratory https://www.southampton.ac.uk/research/facilities/maritime-r... (Their vehicles don't even go that deep, but again that was the point I was trying to make… even in research, the very deep stuff is rare and a "big project" that ends up fanned out ⇒ MRIL made only the cameras for a 4km vessel…)
- t1234s 2y ago
  Do they worry about any issues of the debris winding up in the hands of China or Russia? I would imagine the raptor engines are mostly intact.
  - rapsey 2y ago
    You think there are Russian submarines in the gulf of mexico?
    - eqvinox 2y ago
      They splashed down in the Indian Ocean, not the Gulf of Mexico. Also noone mentioned submarines, debris can just float and drift around (sometimes even at some depth below the surface).
    - Denvercoder9 2y ago
      Starship landed in the Indian Ocean, not the Gulf of Mexico.
    - perihelions 2y ago
      I mean, yes [0]. It's probably the main reason SpaceX went to effort to recover [1] all the engines of the previous booster (IFT-4), which landed in accessible, shallow water in the Gulf of Mexico. The Raptor engines hold valuable secrets, particularly to China who are trying to clone a lot of SpaceX things. The CIA did something very similar to this in the Cold War [2], though they used a boat instead of a submarine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akula-class_submarine#Operational_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akula-class_submarine#Operatio... ("In August 2012, the news media reported that another Akula-class submarine operated in the Gulf of Mexico purportedly undetected for over a month, sparking controversy within U.S. military and political circles...") [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1fvdekt/more_images_from_b11_recovery_new_info_26_of_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1fvdekt/more_... ("More images from B11 recovery + new info "26 of the Raptors have been recovered but they are trying to get all 33") [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
  - phkahler 2y ago

Do they recover whats left of the ship from the Indian Ocean?

by t1234s 2y ago

Do they recover whats left of the ship from the Indian Ocean?

They 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 ago
They 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 ago
  The 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?
      - eqvinox 2y ago
        > As in he works on their development? Yes, she works on their development. > That sounds exciting, do you have something like the name of one of the vehicles? No vehicle name, but this is the university department/lab: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/research/facilities/maritime-robotics-instrumentation-laboratory https://www.southampton.ac.uk/research/facilities/maritime-r... (Their vehicles don't even go that deep, but again that was the point I was trying to make… even in research, the very deep stuff is rare and a "big project" that ends up fanned out ⇒ MRIL made only the cameras for a 4km vessel…)
t1234s 2y ago
Do they worry about any issues of the debris winding up in the hands of China or Russia? I would imagine the raptor engines are mostly intact.
- rapsey 2y ago
  You think there are Russian submarines in the gulf of mexico?
  - eqvinox 2y ago
    They splashed down in the Indian Ocean, not the Gulf of Mexico. Also noone mentioned submarines, debris can just float and drift around (sometimes even at some depth below the surface).
  - Denvercoder9 2y ago
    Starship landed in the Indian Ocean, not the Gulf of Mexico.
  - perihelions 2y ago
    I mean, yes [0]. It's probably the main reason SpaceX went to effort to recover [1] all the engines of the previous booster (IFT-4), which landed in accessible, shallow water in the Gulf of Mexico. The Raptor engines hold valuable secrets, particularly to China who are trying to clone a lot of SpaceX things. The CIA did something very similar to this in the Cold War [2], though they used a boat instead of a submarine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akula-class_submarine#Operational_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akula-class_submarine#Operatio... ("In August 2012, the news media reported that another Akula-class submarine operated in the Gulf of Mexico purportedly undetected for over a month, sparking controversy within U.S. military and political circles...") [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1fvdekt/more_images_from_b11_recovery_new_info_26_of_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1fvdekt/more_... ("More images from B11 recovery + new info "26 of the Raptors have been recovered but they are trying to get all 33") [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
- phkahler 2y ago