3 ms·
I'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 les
by HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
I'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.
- Denvercoder9 2y ago> I'm not sure how critical "catching" the booster is to reusability Not necessarily for reusability, but it helps significantly for rapid reusability: it eliminates the need to transport the booster from the landing site to the launch site. Given that it's 9m x 70m and weighs 270 tonnes, that's not an easy process.
- newsclues 2y agoEfficiency and cost are the goals, reusability is just one way to do that. Moving big heavy things less is another.
- cryptonector 2y ago> but it does save weight by not needing legs for landing That was the exact reason they went this way.