4 ms·
So is it cheaper to dump the booster in the ocean then land it back at the tower and then have to dispose of it?
by redmajor12 2y ago
So is it cheaper to dump the booster in the ocean then land it back at the tower and then have to dispose of it?
- modeless 2y agoThe booster always follows a trajectory for an ocean landing until it passes a bunch of safety checks, and then it diverts to the launchpad. This way a failure early on can't cause it to crash on land. What probably happened is it failed a safety check (e.g. a sensor read out of range) and so it didn't divert to the launchpad. It's cheaper to dump the booster in the ocean than to build a new launch tower if it's destroyed in a failed landing. They have an assembly line for boosters, but only one fully complete launch tower at the moment.
- sneak 2y agoThe launch tower takes multiple months to build. The orbital launch mount and launch tower and quick disconnect hardware is all custom and expensive and huge. They call it “Stage 0”. Losing that is an order of magnitude more of a setback than losing a Stage 1.
- avmich 2y agoI guess they didn't optimize the towers to be fast-buildable :) because there are several obvious ideas.
- martyvis 2y agoThe 2nd tower at Starbase is much more modular than the first and is being built at quite a rapid rate.
- sneak 2y agoThey’re building one at the Cape, too, but they’re still a multi-month process.
- mgiampapa 2y agoConstruct additional pylons?
- avmich 2y agoWhy not to use the Mechazilla for adding the next section of tower on top of existing one? So we transport parts to the tower, assemble relatively thin sections of tower nearby, the lifter moving along the tower brings the sections on top of existing ones, and we have a few places for optimizations here. The proponents of The Boring Company may see some parallels here.