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SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling chopsticks landing
- davidguetta 2y agoIs this due to the higher incidence angle ? Seemed like the main 'difficulty' factor that was upped in the mission description
- alach11 2y agoYeah Elon described it as a "harder" and "faster" landing. So maybe things were a little outside of the safe parameters, necessitating the change in plans. I wonder if we'll get to find out what that was.
- cwillu 2y agoThat was the upper stage, not the booster.
- LanceJones 2y agoIt was, in fact, the booster ("coming in harder and faster"). The upper stage's orientation was being tested (nose down until final flip) as was the removal of 2,100 heat shield tiles.
- pdabbadabba 2y agoI think these were two different things. It was Starship that reentered (successfully) at a lower angle of attack, but it was the Super Heavy Booster that was supposed to attempt the chopsticks landing.
- cwillu 2y agoI haven't seen anything for sure, but there was a significantly bent antenna on the launch tower that may have been the cause.
- chasd00 2y agoIirc on the way up they announced the tower was go for catch. Divert order was given on the way back down. Really curious to find out what the reason was because it seemed like a picture perfect splash down. No random fires, no (visible) component explosions. Maybe a range issue like a boat or something?
- cwillu 2y agoYep, may not be related, I'm just going off the speculation + a picture from one of everydayastronaut's cameras showing a rather bent looking antenna structure on the top of the tower.
- holoduke 2y agoSeems like fts failed and the booster is still floating in the sea right now.
- skissane 2y ago> Seems like fts failed and the booster is still floating in the sea right now. FTS is designed for flight termination, not sinking the booster after ocean soft touchdown. So if FTS detonation fails to terminate the flight sufficiently quickly, that counts as an FTS failure which FAA will require to be investigated as a safety mishap, grounding the launch vehicle in the meantime. But if FTS fails to sink the booster after ocean soft touchdown, it wasn’t designed to do that anyway, so I don’t think the FAA will consider it a “failure”. If the flight plan lists this outcome as a possibility, and SpaceX has a backup plan to respond to it, it isn’t a failure as far as the FAA is concerned.
- andrewflnr 2y agoDid they want to sink it? I'd think they want to recover it for investigation purposes.
- AgentK20 2y agoThere's likely minimal value to recovering it given how much telemetry they already have, plus having launched very similar boosters (test flights 5 and below, plus Starhopper) for a similar launch profile. Additionally, based on previous comments SpaceX engineers have made when towing an in-the-water booster back to land, making it safe for transport to active commercial waterways is a huge pain in the ass. There's also considerations to be made for protection of intellectual property: much harder for other companies to steal your trade secrets from the bottom of the gulf of mexico.
- andrewflnr 2y agoSad, but makes sense I guess.
- 2y ago
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoWhy can't the tower/chopsticks be as portable as the booster?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- carabiner 2y agoThen you have to have something to catch the tower.
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoYou can drive the tower
- rkagerer 2y agoAt some point you might as well just stick rockets on the Earth and move that around.
- beeflet 2y agoit's towers all the way down!
- hindsightbias 2y agoI forget that sf novel with mobile cities on crawlers.
- Buildstarted 2y agoIt was Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. Was an ok book. (Better than the film)
- nvllsvm 2y agoMortal Engines?
- andrewflnr 2y ago
- simonw 2y agoWhat's the advantage of the chopsticks landing over splashing the thing down in the ocean? Does an ocean landing cause significant damage that's not present with an on-land chopsticks landing? Presumably there are pretty big advantages considering how much it must have cost to develop the chopsticks approach.
- davidguetta 2y ago- salt water is horrific for anything - time to transport, move back into initial position.
- simonw 2y agoThat makes sense - sending out barges / recovery vehicles into the ocean can't be cheap. The environmental impact of a chopsticks landing is likely a whole lot less damaging too.
- singleshot_ 2y agoWhat do you figure is worse for chemical changes to materials, being engulfed in a big call of plasma, or being dunked in the ocean? I don’t know any chemistry but there seem to be a lot of smart people round here. What say you?
- lukeschlather 2y agoSeagoing ships are good at being in salt water but don't deal as well with being engulfed in plasma. Starship is pretty good at being engulfed in plasma but doesn't handle being engulfed in salt water very well. Making a single ship that can handle both is a very tall order, even just doing one or the other is hard.
- shiroiushi 2y agoSeagoing ships are pretty good at floating on top of salt water for a while, but they're not very good at being "dunked" in it (i.e. sunken). It is possible to raise sunken ships and rehabilitate them to regular service, and this has been before, but it generally destroys everything inside, and requires a ton of work. Salt water is one of the most corrosive substances we know of.
- ortusdux 2y agoI remember there was a phase of Falcon design where it looked like they had perfected barge landing, and then they had a rash of failures. Later on they admitted to intentionally crashing older boosters so they could find the limits of the hardware. They were iterating at such a pace that the data was worth more than a recovered booster. I wonder if that was the case today?
- ericcumbee 2y agoYes Musk said before one of the first flights, that they are making changes and building new hardware at a much faster rate than they could ever hope to fly it right now. pretty much something to the effect that by the time they get to fly hardware a lot of it is obsolete.
- mjamesaustin 2y agoTo give an example of this, the Starship they've been flying on the last few flights is already obsolete. There's a newer V2 but they wanted to burn through the rest of the V1s they had already built and get more data before flying V2.
- fastball 2y agoThey also apparently already have a V3 in the works.
- cyphertruck 2y agoIt's been announced, and is surely being designed, but they are only building hardware for V2 right now. Most likely V2 will continue as long as they need to get dialed in what they want V3 to be, then they will switch. V2 seems to be based on the learnings from V1, and I think V3 is the real design they want to fly-- but V3 depends on Raptor 3 and probably other advancements, and Raptor 3 is still at the testing stage in MacGregor. For instance the V2 design seems to use Raptor 2.5 which is a Raptor 2 variant with Raptor 3 style interface with the ship. So they are testing the ship design to support Raptor 3 before they have Raptor 3. The engines are really heart of these things and drive the development cadence.
- jmward01 2y ago[flagged]
- lurking_swe 2y agoevery other space company in the last 30 years “gatekept” themselves by not being ambitious, creative, and crazy enough. That’s not SpaceX’s problem. Hopefully they continue inspiring other companies to try reusing and reducing the cost of space flight.
- madaxe_again 2y agoI mean, this is like refusing to eat food because Fritz Haber was morally dubious. Ooooh his wife committed suicide because he went against his promise to her and made chemical weapons! We mustn’t use his fertilisers. I mean, I get it, but if we ran humanity this way we’d still be licking rocks and strangling animals one by one.
- ancorevard 2y agoYes, we must demand they stop improving at such a speed. How dare they have ambition to develop tech advanced enough to go to Mars.
- jmward01 2y agoI gotta call out this comment. I never said 'stop them!' I said I worry about space x being a gatekeeper. This is a valid point since it is obvious that they are building the gate. Please don't put words into my mouth.
- selectodude 2y agoIt’s physically impossible for SpaceX to have a monopoly on space.
- jmward01 2y ago
- piombisallow 2y agoHypothetically speaking (asking for a friend), can you intercept the Starship with standard AA missiles as it re-enters?
- starspangled 2y agoNah, Starship is going 6 times faster than standard missile as it re-enters, and ~100km up.
- consumer451 2y agoHowever, it can certainly be hit soon after that phase of flight. That's part of the reason that I never understood the point to point military pitch. There are so many reasons why Starship can't land anywhere near a hot zone.
- lazide 2y agoEh, still exposed less to AA due to the flight path/time in flight than a typical airplane would be. Any AA would need to be near point of landing (or very long range/expensive, like a theatre level SAM). Not as crazy an idea as it sounds. Biggest issue is unlike nap of the earth flying, good luck hiding you were coming in or where you landed. So better get out and moving ASAP once you land.
- consumer451 2y agoYeah, exactly on the ballistic trajectory which lights up every ICBM early warning system in the hemisphere. The other thing is how many options for diverting does a Starship have? How many mechazilla’s ya got? Can Starship change the LZ mid flight? Can it abort? Are there booster stages ready at each location for quick turn around? And.. what exact cargo needs to be moved in 1hr, announced to the world, that would not serve the mission better by being moved more quietly in a C-130, or C-17, in 12 hours? I can’t think of one. There are spec ops teams pre positioned around the globe, and they like to keep things quiet. So what is this special cargo?
- starspangled 2y agoThey demonstrated the engines re-lighting in space, which is significant. There had been some questions about this because the engine is of a design that is said to be very tricky to start, and the tank pressurization system of the rocket has the risk of water and CO2 ice forming in the methane tanks, which had caused several failures in past tests flights. So this is a pretty good milestone. So we might start seeing test flights actually entering orbit soon. Possibly even carrying some real payloads soon.
- TeenGirls17 2y ago[flagged]
- icpmacdo 2y agoWhy don't they already carry payloads? Is there anything worth taking up with the current expected value of it exploding ect?
- antoniuschan99 2y agothey carried a banana this time :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ethbr1 2y agoIs the Starship upper stage boosting itself up to full orbit yet?
- teractiveodular 2y agoSee also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42188247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42188247
- stbullard 2y agoCould they have crashed it because of security/safety concerns for President-elect Trump, who was there as a surprise guest, watching the launch with Elon? Per NYTimes: “It was pretty epic on Attempt 1,” Kate Tice, a senior quality engineering manager at SpaceX, said of the last test flight’s tower catch on the company’s livestream. “But the safety of the teams and the public and the pad itself are paramount.” Not sure what would have changed compared to the first launch, other than Trump’s presence - and they haven’t described any anomalies. A launch is one thing: lots of explosive potential, but the kinetic energy is quickly dispersed. The KE of a botched landing of what’s essentially a ballistic missile would be a whole lot more concentrated… Or maybe they just didn’t have time to file a modified flight plan for it to enter even-more-specially-restricted controlled airspace.
- erulabs 2y agoAs far as I’ve seen when airspace is restricted, it’s restricted, there are no “levels of restriction”. If a spaceship is launching, no one can fly - if the president-elect is there, no one can fly. Also, I believe star base is over two miles away, so I doubt this was a concern.
- gnarlynarwhal42 2y ago[flagged]
- derektank 2y agoI don't know where you're getting "an overwhelming portion of the USA" from. Donald Trump won by a margin of 2.5 million votes, with a total of 77 million of the ~160 million ballots cast, in a nation with 260 million people of voting age
- newZWhoDis 2y agoIt’s incredible that despite acknowledging the overwhelming evidence, no where in your post do you consider that you’re just wrong.
- kfrzcode 2y agoWhich apple did you bite?
- smeeger 2y agowhy is elon musk never in these comments answering questions? to my knowledge hes never left a comment publicly on HN but has on reddit
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoMaybe a venture capitalist micro forum isn’t as important as you think it is?
- smeeger 2y agonot so micro really
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoDoes it even have an Elon Musk though?
- someperson 2y agoIt's not too crazy of a question since Elon Musk has given public interviews in association with YCombinator [1] [2] (and was a founder in partly YC-associated OpenAI [3]), and the fact he seems to spend his limited time these days posting on X, streaming video games, memeing and presumably lurking on Reddit. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqEo107j-uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqEo107j-uw [3] https://www.techemails.com/p/elon-musk-and-openai https://www.techemails.com/p/elon-musk-and-openai
- hkgjjgjfjfjfjf 2y ago[dead]
- umeshunni 2y agoIs there a publicly documented (or guesstimated) timeline for Starship? What comes next?
- Veserv 2y agoYes. Flight around the moon with passengers scheduled for 2023 [1][2]. No point looking to the public statements of a person who is legally recognized [3] as making such fanciful claims that no reasonable person could possibly believe them. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/02/yusaku-maezawa-opens-up-public-seats-on-spacex-starship-moon-flight.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/02/yusaku-maezawa-opens-up-publ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DearMoon_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DearMoon_project [3] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/1/24259588/tesla-lawsuit-autopilot-dismissed-elon-musk-self-driving https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/1/24259588/tesla-lawsuit-au...
- imtringued 2y agoI have been promised a fast iterative development cycle. All I'm seeing are very very small incremental gains with each launch. It looks like it will take as long as any space project. It will be delayed and take almost a decade from start to completion.
- Culonavirus 2y agoAll actual future launch dates and profiles are all TBD. This program is still in its experimental phase. Also all guesstimates are technical only and optimistic - the FAA and/or any kind of serious anomaly can slow things down by months. What has been guesstimated by the observers and/or stated by Gwynne/Elon: - next flight some time in jan/feb - next flight will be a V1 booster with a V2 ship (still Raptor 2s) - next flight profile will be similar to this one, if they land the ship in the ocean precisely again, the they will try to catch the next one afer that (note this is not currently possible as no existing ship has catch hardware installed) - stated flight test cadence they would like to reach in 2025 is 25, observers think 10-12 are more likely, in both cases they need to move pretty fast - both the star factory and the second launch pad should come online fully within the first half of 2025, launch cadence should improve a lot after that - for Artemis 3 they need to demonstrate fuel transfer in 2025, otherwise the timeline of that program will for sure have to be extended (probably even beyond the already expected delay to 2027) - elon wants to send a few starships to mars in the 2026 window, and that may actually happen if everything goes smooth as butter until then, but the 2028 window with humans on board is just a wish, very much "elon time", most observers do not think starship will be human rated for such long flights before 2030s
- 7e 2y ago[flagged]
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoSingle most difficult and amazing aviation feats in your lifetime… and you can’t see it because of an ideology religion. You are free to like the art and not the artist, or, open your mind a bit… or keep on with the path laid out for you I guess.
- rkagerer 2y agoAny technical specifics available yet on the reason the catch was aborted? Eg. Which parameters were out of range.
- rob74 2y agoSpaceX hasn't yet released anything AFAIK. My wild speculation: not wanting to risk anything with both Trump and Musk being present at the launch site?!
- ragebol 2y agoBut normally they do risk any other people? No, not at all. People are miles from where the robot could potentially go even after it is remotely aborted/blown up.
- bell-cot 2y agoIt's not just the area where the first stage might touch down, it's how far large pieces of debris might be thrown in a worst case RUD. Plus, the Secret Service may be feeling far less tolerant of "eh, it's less than a 1 in BigNum chance of anyone getting hurt" odds than your average Tom, Dick, or Harry.
- RobinUS2 2y agoSounds a bit farfetched, not like they wouldn't hear it later?
- bell-cot 2y agoTrump, and Musk, and Cruz (US Senator), and Saltzman (USSF General), and a fair number of other VIP's. Whatever was or wasn't going wrong in the booster during its landing approach, I'd for-sure bet that the "acceptable" parameters for a chopstick landing were tightened down quite a ways from the prior launch. (Or such a landing had simply been ruled out, by Security fiat.)
- fernandotakai 2y ago> Following a nominal ascent and stage separation, the booster successfully transitioned to its boostback burn to begin the return to launch site. During this phase, automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt. The booster then executed a pre-planned divert maneuver, performing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. from here https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-6 https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- vvpan 2y agoHonestly do not understand why rockets are a big deal. What are we going to do with them? If anything we have too many satellites in the sky as is.
- odirf 2y agoMany people have lost money on Polymarket. The chance of the sticks catching the Starship was around 75% and of course immediately dropped to 0% after the announcement.
- ryandvm 2y agoFascinating, the more distractions Musk has, the more impressive SpaceX does. Just imagine what he could do if he were the CEO of a hundred companies!