4 ms·

Why can't the tower/chopsticks be as portable as the booster?

• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• carabiner 2y ago
  Then you have to have something to catch the tower.
  • brcmthrowaway 2y ago
    You can drive the tower
    • rkagerer 2y ago
      At some point you might as well just stick rockets on the Earth and move that around.
  • beeflet 2y ago
    it's towers all the way down!
• hindsightbias 2y ago
  I forget that sf novel with mobile cities on crawlers.
  • Buildstarted 2y ago
    It was Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. Was an ok book. (Better than the film)
  • nvllsvm 2y ago
    Mortal Engines?
• andrewflnr 2y ago
  Probably for similar reasons that your average apartment tower isn't portable. Transporting empty big rockets is already really hard and finicky. Transporting something even bigger and heavier than the largest known rockets is harder. Then you need to anchor it to the ground strongly enough to take the weight and dynamic forces of a fully loaded rocket and subsequent landing, but weakly enough you can move it again later. Overall it's really a situation that benefits from a permanent concrete foundation.
  • secondcoming 2y ago
    Oil rigs are transportable and massive. I don't think it'd be unfeasible to convert one of those into a rocket catcher.
    • itishappy 2y ago
      That was the plan for a bit, but it didn't pan out. https://spacenews.com/spacex-drops-plans-to-covert-oil-rigs-into-launch-platforms/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-drops-plans-to-covert-oil-rigs-...
    • andrewflnr 2y ago
      Transportable over land? I assumed that was the question.
• nickpinkston 2y ago
  We finally found a great use for those heavy lift dirigibles.
  • Aeolun 2y ago
    Think you are going to need more than a few. Also really don’t want your apartment tower to fall down if anything goes wrong. Maybe safer to just build multiple.
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• deleted 2y ago
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