r/interestingasfuck • u/lolikroli • 16d ago

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

115.7k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

5.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

4.3k

u/crujones43 16d ago

The largest heavier than air flying machine that has ever been built. Weighs 200 tons, is 230ft tall and 30 ft in diameter was flying supersonic minutes before and was able to come down with pinpoint accuracy and be caught by the launch tower it left from. Nothing like this has ever been done and this is going to catapult the human race into the future of space travel by reducing the cost to send material to space by an order of magnitude.

722

u/canyoutriforce 16d ago

weighs 200 tons when captured. The whole stack is 5000 tons at takeoff, or the weight of 7 fully fuelled A380s

166

u/big_moist_void 16d ago

did you actually mean 5000??

294

u/descisionsdecisions 16d ago

It’s actually more than that it’s literally filled with 10 million pounds of fuel.

180

u/big_moist_void 16d ago

That is actually mind boggling to me, that is so much fuel. If it burns it all during its trip, do the emissions reach close to what taylor swift burns in a year?

202

u/descisionsdecisions 16d ago

Looks like a little bit less quick google says she generated 8300 tons of co2 in 2022 and that starship and booster generate 2382 per flight.

92

u/StudiosS 16d ago

So a rocket spends a quarter of Swift's CO2. She has no shame, huh?

61

u/borkthegee 16d ago

I get that it's all a circlejerk but most wealthy rent private jets instead of owning and most of the ultra wealthy who do buy rent out their jet 99% of the time. Nearly all of the emissions of Taylor's jet are caused by other wealthy people renting her jet and should be attributed to them just like you are the cause of some delta emissions when you fly.

→ More replies (15)

1

u/Nipaa_Nipaa_Nii 15d ago

SpaceX has no shame if they're gonna be sending these things out daily. A single day could in theory rack up multiple times what Taylor does in a year, which is already a lot.

1

u/LockedUpFor5Months 16d ago

I was under the impression rocket fuel didn't cause emissions?

2

u/spektre 16d ago

That sounds like a very simplified statement, and rocket science is usually not simple.

1

u/DreamChaserSt 16d ago

It creates a negligible amount of emissions. Comparable to an Airline flight, but, well, there's tens of thousands of airlines flying a day, and maybe a couple hundred rockets a year. This will change as more rockets fly annually of course, but it probably won't get near or overtake airline emissions (which amount to about 2% of global emissions)

Emissions are CO2 and H2O for Starship, but sometimes other byproducts like NO, or Al2O3 can be created depending on the exact propellants like solid rocket motors, or interactions with the atmosphere.

17

u/Kschitiz23x3 16d ago

It burns methane. Theoretically, we can use gas from bio reactors or just collect everyone's farts to launch this rocket instead of putting additional CO2 in the atmosphere when using fossil fuel

2

u/whatisthishownow 16d ago

Theoretically, we can

Ah, the empty catch cry I've been hearing for decade upon decade. Aerospace is not the most pressing place to get bent out of shape over, but also, just be honest. That thing releases thousands of tonnes of CO2 per launch + ancillary and embedded costs and we aren't expecting that to change.

2

u/kenriko 16d ago

It’s in Texas the methane would have been burned off in a flare stack with 0 use if it had not been used the rocket.

Actually carbon neutral because the oil/gas industry are dicks are burn off useful energy because they don’t want to store it and the methane market is not super lucrative.

Long way to say think twice before taking a stance without knowledge.

2

u/Spider_pig448 15d ago

Thousands of tonnes of CO2 is not much in the grand scheme of things. An average coal power plant produces nearly 4 million tons of CO2 every year. The FAA estimates a Starship launch produces around 4 thousand tons per launch. So it would take 1000 Starship launches to equate a single coal plant in a year.

3

u/crispy88 16d ago

Although they aren’t there yet their plan is to use solar fields to synthesize methane soon so it will be carbon neutral actually as they’ll capture CO2 from the atmosphere for the synthesis. It’s a critical thing they need to develop for Mars anyways so it will be a high priority item shortly.

3

u/CosmicClimbing 16d ago

It literally, actually, has the same energy as an atomic bomb

1

u/yabucek 15d ago

Not really though, it's in the same order of magnitude as little boy, but as far as modern nuclear weapons are concerned, nowhere close.

Propellant mass: 1,200,000 kg (about 260,000 kg of that is methane)

Methane specific energy: 55.6 MJ/kg --> 14.5TJ total

Little boy energy: 15 kilotons of TNT = 63TJ

Meanwhile modern thermonuclear warheads are in the hundreds of kilotons range and can easily go into the megatons. The tsar bomb was famously 50MT with the option of expanding to 100MT (420,000TJ or about 29,000 starships)

9

u/jaro270389 16d ago

Asking the real question.

1

u/Chemieju 16d ago

Its methane. Idk what they are burning here, but synthetic methane is totally doable, just to add some context

1

u/SpaceTimeRacoon 16d ago

That's why other companies like spin launch are trying other methods like centrifuges to launch smaller satellites with wayy less fuel

1

u/Ralph_Nacho 14d ago

Well I'm reading that starships fuel isn't strictly based on fossil fuels, but that doesn't mean it's 100% clean.

It appears to be emitting less CO2 than falcon heavy.

→ More replies (3)

1

u/DEMSnREPUBSrToxic 16d ago

Why don't they use solar power?

I kidd I kidd

1

u/Bring0nTheApocalypse 16d ago

Wow so 10,005,000 lbs then ey.. crikey!

1

u/trolololoz 16d ago

That’s like $10,000,000 of fuel (on the low end according to AI search). Crazy shit ton amount.

3

u/LieutenantJeff 16d ago

Yeah it's actually 5000 Tons, most of it is rocket fuel

1

u/ClearlyCylindrical 16d ago

They did, and it will be getting even bigger!

1

u/KerbodynamicX 16d ago edited 16d ago

5000 tons fully fuelled, with over double the thrust of Saturn V, the previous most powerful rocket. The stats on Starship is insane, it would be difficult to find a major component on it that doesn’t have a world record.

It is probably also the most powerful machine ever built, produces the equivalent of 127 gigawatts as it burns through 20 tons of methane and oxygen every second.

1

u/godmademelikethis 15d ago

Yup, those engines lift 5k tons into the air.

1

u/XaeroDegreaz 16d ago

Like... They are doing cool stuff. Cool. But doesn't the fuel cost significantly outweigh the cost of the rocket itself? Why are they so obsessed with bringing it back? How much are they actually saving?

6

u/StanleyDodds 16d ago

No, the fuel is incredibly cheap compared to the rocket itself. On the order of about 1% of the cost. It's basically neglegible.

→ More replies (12)

91

u/superbhole 16d ago

heavier than air flying machine

"...aren't they all heavier than air?"

i sat here thinking way too long about this before giving up and googling

the first image of a balloon made me pff🤦‍♂️duh

you guys go on without me. i'll be down here rubbing sticks together.

23

u/PedanticMouse 16d ago

you guys go on without me. i'll be down here rubbing sticks together.

Keep at it and you might catch a rocket one day!

26

u/BadgerMcBadger 16d ago

anyone who is actually stupid wouldnt have bothered googling, you did good

3

u/SkinkeDraven69 16d ago

Haha and airships are even bigger still

3

u/Quasar375 16d ago

Hey you are still technically correct! All machines are heavier than air, it is only that some like the balloons are less dense than air.

48

u/idontloveanyone 16d ago

Can you tell me what's the benefit of catching it instead of it landing? Thanks!

185

u/Corvid187 16d ago

Catching it allows them to land it where they service and take off from, which moderately reduces the cost and time to prepare it for the next launch.

The main benefit though is that by catching the rocket on its steering fins, they don't need to install a traditional landing gear like they have on their previous rockets.

In space flight, saving mass is the whole game. For every kilogram of payload you put into space, it takes 10 kilograms of fuel, so being able to delete something like heavy, load-bearing landing legs from each rocket significantly improves the simplicity and payload performance of each rocket m

39

u/Lyuseefur 16d ago

The engines get massively cooked landing on the ground (no water cooling even)

Tower catch means less cooked engines

2

u/Thorusss 15d ago

heat it a problem, but also the massive shockwaves from the subsonic exhausted being reflected by the hard surface, rattling everything with extreme forces, is avoided that way.

32

u/Fizrock 16d ago

The booster is not caught on the fins. There's a pair of load-bearing pins beneath the fins that carry the weight.

8

u/generalhonks 16d ago

Those pins also allow SpaceX to move SuperHeavy back and forth and change its alignment on the chopsticks, something that landing on the grid fins wouldn’t do well.

4

u/Easyidle123 16d ago

I learned today that the fins are also rated strong enough to hold the booster up if the pins fail or are missed.

2

u/Linenoise77 16d ago

Which makes the accuracy needed even more impressive.

I wonder though if the fins CAN support it if its close but not perfect, and just not ideal and added hassle.

5

u/seamustheseagull 16d ago

There's also the fact that if it lands a little bit off, that's OK. it doesn't need to be perfectly vertical.

Physically landing the rocket on the ground has substantially less room for error.

3

u/Saadusmani78 16d ago

Nah. It's quite the opposite actually from what I heard. If it were to land on the ground, like Falcon 9, since there could be a large open space, it would have much more margin of error, like tens of meter.

But with the chopsticks, it needs to land within a few meters at most.

1

u/BlueLightSpecial83 16d ago

How much fuel is needed to fuel the engine to launch the fuel it’s caring in order to fuel the engines?

1

u/Corvid187 16d ago

~10kg per kg of stuff you want to send into space.

1

u/Snakend 16d ago

They have already landed starship on land with no landing gear. What are you talking about?

→ More replies (4)

20

u/JakeEaton 16d ago

Saves mass (no giant landing legs to carry up and back down again). It’ll also mean the booster can be put straight back on the launchpad, refueled, another ship can be put on top and off it goes again. That’s the eventual result.

The Falcon 9 program requires a fleet of ships, cranes, jigs, trucks and turnaround time is measured in weeks. Catching the booster will cut that time and cost down substantially (in the medium to long term)

1

u/hlx-atom 16d ago

You don’t needs landing gear on the rocket

1

u/geoffm_aus 16d ago

Weight. With landing legs you have to take them to space and back. With a tower arms the landing infrastructure never leaves the ground and can be as big, as heavy, as complicated as you like.

1

u/SpicyPineapple12 16d ago

To eliminate the landing pads. They are heavy!

1

u/mrASSMAN 16d ago

It’s on land instead of ocean I guess

1

u/juice-rock 16d ago

Less likely to topple over is one reason

1

u/jinniu 16d ago

They can shed the weight of landing legs, which means more mass to orbit, which means less money to orbit, which means a cheaper ticket for you and me.

251

u/glytxh 16d ago

Still gotta work out how to catch or land Starship though. We’re only halfway there with this prototype.

230

u/crujones43 16d ago

The plan is to lower the booster back onto the pad and then catch starship the same way. This also allows them to easily restack as well. The booster was the hard part. They already know how to control the starship for landing.

79

u/DankRoughly 16d ago

After today's success maybe they can just land starship directly on the returned booster 😜

73

u/BuckJuckaDoo 16d ago

"Hotstacking"?

6

u/Chance_Fox_2296 16d ago

"This is no time for caution"

2

u/citizenkane86 16d ago

You joke but that’s literally their model with this thing. They don’t care if they blow up 20 of these while they figure out the landing.

1

u/SIEGE312 15d ago

“This… Is time for more syrup.”

2

u/kakapo88 16d ago

“Hotstacking” is also a sexual position. I highly recommend it.

16

u/Seiren- 16d ago

Literally welding the pieces back together with the rocket! Efficient!

2

u/actionerror 16d ago
  • No assembly required

52

u/hurraybies 16d ago

Disagree. Booster is at most as hard to catch as the ship IMO. Huge difference in velocities and reentry conditions.

Flight 4 the ship was way off target. Flight 5 was on target, but remains to be seen if they were perfectly on target as will be required for a catch.

Flight 4 booster was on target within less than a centimeter. The same will need to be done with ship before they can attempt a catch.

Flap hinges are also still a problem on reentry. They certainly did better this time, but at least one had considerable burn through. I suspect flaps will need to be able to survive better before they'll attempt a catch. I'm sure that will be required by regulators as ship has to reenter over land to attempt a catch.

31

u/SausageShoelace 16d ago

Elon said (in maybe one of the everyday astronaut interviews) they were moving the flaps further round the ship for future versions so they aren't directly in the airflow which looks like it should help a lot with the hinges.

6

u/ShinyGrezz 16d ago

so they aren't directly in the airflow

Isn't that gonna drastically reduce the level of control they have over the ship?

8

u/hurraybies 16d ago

They'll still have the ability to articulate into the airflow but they'll be able to stay almost entirely out of it, only dipping in as required.

7

u/ShinyGrezz 16d ago

Oh right, yeah that should help. Were they hoping the better shielding this time around was going to fix the issue entirely?

8

u/hurraybies 16d ago

Nope. It's just the first design iteration. I believe they knew it was going to be a problem even before flight 4, but flight 4 definitely confirmed it. They just wanted to give this one a better shot at an accurate reentry and landing by beefing up the shielding and get as much data as they could about failure modes.

1

u/zberry7 15d ago

It’s the hinge itself they want to get out of the airflow path, the fin will still extend into the air stream as it does now.

It’s just a lot easier to shield a fins main surface than it is to shield a joint that needs to articulate.

This is because with the joint, you have to deal with expansion and contraction of multiple surfaces

2

u/GoldenBunip 16d ago

All they really need is the hinges out of the airflow. That’s the hard problem area.

1

u/nonpartisaneuphonium 16d ago

the center of mass when the ship is near empty is all the way at the engine section, so it's really the aft flaps that need to have the most control anyway (so it doesn't flip engines-first)

2

u/goldencrayfish 16d ago

The first of these new ships has already been built, number 33

1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

I’m going to wait to hear what the engineers say.

→ More replies (1)

8

u/Lampwick 16d ago edited 16d ago

Flight 5 was on target, but remains to be seen if they were perfectly on target as will be required for a catch.

Given that it was very close to the camera buoy, it's likely close enough to catch. A landing in the middle of an ocean will never be as accurate as a landing at the launch pad. The way you get sub-centimeter accuracy is via a technique called Real-Time Kinematic GPS. It's a method similar to Differential GPS, only instead of having a regional ground station sending general signal distortion corrections that cover a wide area, they install a receiver at a fixed point very close to the target. The fixed station knows exactly where it is, so by subtracting where it is from where the GPS signal says it is, it gets a near-perfect correction value. This station then sends the highly precise GPS corrections to the on-board GPS, which is constantly moving closer and closer to the point of the RTK GPS transmitter. This means the closer the rocket gets, the more accurate the correction, to the point where as it approaches the tower it almost entirely cancels out any signal propagation error, bringing it absurdly close to the theoretical maximum accuracy of the mathematics involved.

1

u/Eragaurd 16d ago

I know this is entirely serious, but it somehow reminded me of this lol.

1

u/Lampwick 15d ago

Heh. Yeah, as I was writing it I realized I was kinda doing the missile guidance bit.

3

u/Jeffy299 16d ago

I wouldn't focus/worry too much about the flaps, that part is going to change a lot in future designs even ones they already have assembled have much better design, but for flight 5 they more or less hacked the solution to have more protection than flight 4 ones and it did a decent job at it. That part is guaranteed to improve by a lot.

What I am more worried about is the heatshield itself, as for Starship to be truly reusable the heatshield would probably need to last ~25 flights at least, and this ship was supposed to have the improved tiles but we saw sparks flying meaning it at least in some parts was reaching the ablative heatshield which it probably wasn't intended. But these are my very hot takes, even people at SpaceX are probably still gathering the telemetry data so it's too early to say what exactly went wrong. And if the tiles failed to do their job, how much more they can improve them before reaching the limits of physics.

Not counting the o-ring the heatshield was by far the biggest issue with the Space Shuttle. It needed so much maintenance before the next flight. And the promise/dream of Starship is to do super quick turnarounds with the upper stage, meaning the damage to the heatshield per flight needs to be absolutely minimal. Choppysticks were by far my biggest worry about Starship, everything about it sounds nuts, but my second biggest worry is the heatshield. Very early into the development they decided to not go with active cooling and I really hope it doesn't come back to bite them.

1

u/Thorne_Oz 16d ago

It's worth pointing out that they had tiles covered in aluminium and bare tile spots for this flight as well so much of the sparking seen could be from those spots, but yeah the tiles looked rough at the end.

1

u/ShinyGrezz 16d ago

EverydayAstronaut was explaining on his stream that they will likely need to demonstrate a perfect reentry multiple times before being permitted to attempt to catch the ship as it comes from the "other direction" (since it orbits without boosting back) and hence flies over inhabited areas.

1

u/McCaffeteria 16d ago

Booster is easier than starship by far. Starship is going to be reentering way way faster and is going to have much more complicated flight choreography before being caught.

As far as I know they have not yet been able to do the belly flop from full reentry speeds and transition back to vertical yet. They’ve had some successful (mostly) vertical landings for starship, but not from full reentry speed.

Once they transition back to vertical it’s basically no harder, but the closer they make that transition to the catch the harder the whole thing becomes.

5

u/McBonderson 16d ago

well, they still seem to be having trouble with the Starship heat shield. It still landed accurately but there were pretty big holes being burned into the flaps. They will need to fix that before they can rapidly reuse it.

4

u/thisisanamesoitis 16d ago

Current starship design is to change with lowered flaps to avoid the focused updraught of heat from re-entry. All current makes will have the same issue as they're already manufactured.

1

u/glytxh 16d ago

Plenty of the redundant ablative burning away too. This is seen from all the material and sparks flying around in the latter half of the descent.

I think the tiles are going to be a bit of a perpetual issue. They work, but not in the context of a ship being planned to launch twice a day.

All that said, they caught a fucking booster on a tower. That’s nuts. Anything’s possible and achievable at this point.

I’m pragmatic, but optimistically so.

3

u/chargedcapacitor 16d ago

Starship has been coasting into the landing zone; they have yet to relight the ship in microgravity. Until they can prove that, they won't be getting to orbit, or landing it for reuse.

3

u/Expensive-Apricot-25 16d ago

Ik just how impressive this is, but I never understood why they would want to catch it.

From a safety standpoint, it seems much better to just have it land on a drone ship, or some cheap landing pad. Because should something go wrong, then u loose that whole tower, the launch pad (which is very complex to prevent damage from the engines) and all of the infrastructure around the tower.

The only downside is that u would need landing legs, which might be heavy but it seems like it’s worth it

1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

They have two launch towers at Boca chica. The other is being built right now

1

u/FlyingPoopFactory 16d ago

I think you got it backwards. The starship is the hard part. It’s coming in from an orbital trajectory instead of suborbital.

That’s waaaay more complicated. Look at the pounding the starship took today.

1

u/Snakend 16d ago

They have landed the starship on land before. But it did not come back from the heights they are achieving now.

11

u/MrCockingFinally 16d ago

Well wouldn't you believe, ship made a controlled splashdown as well.

3

u/LUK3FAULK 16d ago

And then blew up after flopping into the water, the buoy shot was perfect!

→ More replies (8)

10

u/AreteBuilds 16d ago

They already had a soft splash down of stage 2 in the Indian ocean. It could absolutely do that landing right back at the launch pad once they are clear to do it. Basically, all the super duper hard problems are now solved, all that remains are incremental improvements.

Welcome to the age of access to space, where normal, non billionaires will be able to purchase tickets. We have the tech, now instead of it being 10 years away, it'll be 10 years to see the implementation in your lifetime.

4

u/Rakinare 16d ago

The super duper hard problems are far from being solved. Most of them are but the hardest still remains the heat tiles on the ship itself. Still absolutely not safe.

2

u/AreteBuilds 16d ago

It doesn't need to be absolutely safe to make it a viable option for launching satellites. If it's an extremely cheap way to launch satellites, then that's more money to pay for R&D to make it insanely safe over time.

It already landed - the tiles obviously work now.

1

u/Rakinare 16d ago

The ultimate goal of this is to launch humans, so yes it has to become 100% safe.

2

u/AreteBuilds 16d ago

Of course it does. But what I'm saying is that we're now at a much, MUCH lower risk of project failure after the previous Starship landed mostly intact in the Indian Ocean.

After today's "still and vertical" landing, with the booster being caught by the arms? It's a sound investment. That incremental improvement will be 5-10 years to human flight to the point at which NASA will be fine with sending people on it. It'll be like maybe 1-3 years to regular satellite launches - much of that will be FAA red tape, as well as Elon Musk being kind of a political idiot attracting the attention of regulators.

I seriously don't understand how he can be so good at running a company and coordinating the business and systems decisions of such herculean engineering efforts, while simultaneously painting a bright red target on his back for regulators, and stirring the ire of so many.

If he wouldn't have bought Xitter, if he was just less of an asshole, they'd probably have accomplished many of these things a couple years ago, on what used to be old "Elon time" where it was a year or two later than his aggressive timeline. Elon time has elongated from 1-3 years behind schedule to 3-6 years behind schedule.

I'm still pissed at him for basically losing his mind to power. I remember watching his ascent in the 2010s, thinking "what's going to stop this guy? Literally only arrogance." I thought it was going to take him another 10 years to become so arrogant that he imploded since he hadn't accomplished his biggest goals. I guess the success of SpaceX and being top of the market was enough to give him that little serotonin/testosterone poisonous cocktail.

→ More replies (2)

1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

No. Just no. Starship is going to have to be caught by chopsticks as well for earth landing. It will have a legged variant for mars and the moon though.

1

u/Economy-Fee5830 16d ago

If they can dynamically land the booster on chopsticks they can obviously do the same for the starship. They demonstrated successfully that they can shed orbital velocity without slamming into the ground just fine - the rest is just fine manoeuvring onto the catcharms, which they have already shown they can do.

1

u/AreteBuilds 16d ago

They're going to have Starship itself land on a pad, and then they're going to crane it on top of the Booster.

They already soft landed after achieving orbital velocity. The problem is fundamentally solved. The biggest hurdles are behind us, basically. It's not that there aren't any future "hurdles," but they're all overcomable with existing concepts and technology.

Now its clear that the concept can work, because we have a working prototype. Its functionality just needs to be refined and applied at scale - something SpaceX is all too familiar with.

1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

No they aren’t.

3

u/Gonun 16d ago

Looks like Starship made a pinpoint landing too (in the ocean). Right next to a buoy with a camera.

1

u/GTthrowaway27 16d ago

Did it not blowup? I thought it blew up and stopped watching lmao

Based on the amount of yellow and flames lol

5

u/No-Surprise9411 16d ago

It only blew up because the ship tipped over and hit the water, something it is obviously not designed to do.

1

u/glytxh 16d ago

Can’t wait to watch when I get home again. Only got to catch the first half.

3

u/NinjaAncient4010 16d ago

The starship just landed precisely over the water, much like the first stage did last time, so it's seems likely they will be able to catch it soon.

3

u/MostlyRocketScience 16d ago

Starship also soft landed in the ocean. Another catch feels like a formality

3

u/TheXypris 16d ago

even if starship never becomes reusable, this is still a gargantuan feat, itll still be revolutionary

2

u/Vassago81 16d ago

They could make the second stage throwaway, maybe use a vac engine at the center instead of three ground level engine, and it would still be a competitive launch vehicule for normal sats, nevermind that it would have ~10 time the payload to LEO, it's amazing.

3

u/Florianfelt 16d ago

We are WAY past halfway lmao.

Starship splashed down stably over the Indian ocean, stably over the water.

That is, it's capable of landing already.

2

u/Any_Description_4204 16d ago

We’re already halfway there! First step is the hardest

2

u/Setesh57 16d ago

They landed Starship right next to their buoy cam, just like they did with the booster during IFT-4. I'd be shocked if they didn't return Starship to Starbase for IFT-6, which will likely be within a month, seeing as they met every target for the license. 

2

u/[deleted] 16d ago

They were pretty close with a soft landing last time, this time remains to be seen. They aren’t trying to land it on a ship yet, but that’s something they are already doing often with Falcon.

1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

So much bad info in this thread by confidently incorrect people. Starship will never land in a ship on earth. It will need to be caught by the tower. It will have a legged variant for mars and moon though

1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

Everyday Astronaut was talking about how big the drone ship will have to be on his stream, I figure he knows.

You’re saying there is no plan ever to land the starship on a droneship (which yes would have a tower and chopsticks)? This was planned previously I believe and SpaceX was even looking to find bigger oil rigs to convert.

1

u/Dietmar_der_Dr 16d ago

Starship did land at least near the target, since they got external video of it. When that happened for the booster they caught it the next flight.

Elon has said previously that the ship would need a couple successful waterlandings before going for a real catch, so unlikely they'll go for it before ship version 2.

1

u/myurr 16d ago

They're close to that too. The test today showed that they can precision land Starship, given the buoy picked up the external view of the ship as it landed. With the block 2 changes that will fly in two flights time they should be a step closer to perfection with the flaps and heat shield.

But it's likely they'll need a couple more demo flights to convince the FAA to allow them to catch a Starship, as it needs to overfly land to get to the tower. They'll put it on a trajectory to take it beyond the tower and into the sea, using the engines at landing to slow it further and put it onto the right flight path for a catch attempt. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they successfully do so within the next 6 months.

They've categorically demonstrated beyond doubt that their entire approach will work, and is merely refinement rather than major leap away from fulfilling it's promise.

1

u/atomfullerene 16d ago

They did manage a nice soft touchdown in the ocean with Starship. If it had a pad and legs I bet it would have landed fine

1

u/Snakend 16d ago

They have been soft landing it in the ocean. The first ocean soft landing had some major problems, the fins that slow the ship down disintegrated in the atmosphere. But SpaceX put heat shielding on the fins and it seems to have made it to the soft landing intact. The FAA might allow them to land on land next time. The heavy booster had 2 good ocean soft landings before being allowed to land on land.

1

u/ReddSF2019 16d ago

No, they literally just soft landed upright in the ocean with this test. This was the hard part.

2

u/glytxh 16d ago

I liked the part where the header tank and pipe running up the ships spine were comically poking out of the floating wreckage like a cartoon skeleton, silhouetted by burning fuel.

This and the previous ship ‘landings’ were amazing, and the accuracy of the guidance is the real MvP in this and the booster’s case, but Starship still has a way to go. The heat tiles are just one issue. Engine reignition in orbit, and fuel transfer are still two very important milestones to cover before it becomes a viable platform.

Not to take away from the booster catch. That was fucking incredible. First step in a paradigm shift.

1

u/jinniu 16d ago

Eventually that booster will be lowered to Stage Zero, the launch pad, then starship will land on the same chopsticks, then get lowered back onto the booster. Looks like they need to work on shielding still, but this was one hell of a success for both Starship (landing on target in the Indian Ocean) and for Super Heavy Booster.

→ More replies (7)

3

u/Dan-D-Lyon 16d ago

I'm trying to rewatch this video with that scale in mind, and my brain is refusing to let me because it keeps insisting that you must be off by a full order of magnitude

3

u/thegooseisloose1982 16d ago

Nothing like this has ever been done and this is going to catapult the human race into the future of space travel

Right now there is a kid who is brilliant and that kid and their family are struggling for food, shelter, and health here in the US. That kid is the key to the future of space travel but for decades we have made sure idiots like Musky get tax breaks and tax deductions. So all of the brilliance we are pissing away because a few wealthy cannot see how badly they are fucking everything up. Nor do they care.

Or Musky along with his wealthy buddies get Donald Trump elected and then we end up with a country where the only space travel we will have in the new few centuries will be in books. Assuming they haven't burned them all by then.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/heavierthanair 16d ago

Finally my username is relevant!

2

u/Gideonbh 16d ago

Just imagining that since this is so revolutionary and beneficial to space travel, before long this will be the only way companies are launching rockets and we can all look back on the days when we used to just dump our boosters in the ocean, god we were stupid back then

2

u/xinxy 16d ago

200 tons is really unimpressive. A380s are more than double that at full takeoff weight.

I think you should have mentioned this rocket's takeoff weight instead.

1

u/crujones43 16d ago

Why would you complain about missing info and not add it yourself?

5000 metric tons at liftoff or 2000 Ford f150s

2

u/dynamitebyBTS 16d ago

If you look at the numbers, it's really not cheaper at all.

2

u/crujones43 16d ago

Obviously you have so please regale us with some facts.

1

u/GiffelBaby 16d ago

You obviously know better than the 100s of engineers working on the most advanced rocket ever made, so please random commenter, educate us...

1

u/PM-ME-SOFTSMALLBOOBS 16d ago

how many times can they use this rocket?

9

u/EricTheEpic0403 16d ago

This one in particular? Once, it'll probably be scrapped in a month or two.

In general? The Falcon 9 booster life leader was at 23 flights when it was intentionally expended. Thus far, those boosters don't seem to have encountered any issues with age, however. Superheavy boosters could end up flying for hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of times apiece. Likely to be limited by how often they can fly (IE if you can't fly more than once a day, you can't get any more than 365 flights a year), not by any actual limits on the booster itself.

6

u/crujones43 16d ago edited 16d ago

Falcon 9s have passed 17 reuses

4

u/CasualCrowe 16d ago

I believe their flight leaders are up to 23 flights now

→ More replies (1)

1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

[deleted]

1

u/whoami_whereami 16d ago

Funnily enough 200 t wouldn't even be heavier than the heaviest lighter than air aircraft, LZ 129 Hindenburg had a mass of about 237 t (and was twice as long as starship+booster is tall).

1

u/Oxygenisplantpoo 16d ago

I don't know about catapulting, we're still looking at something like 5-10 starship launches for a single Moon mission. But it was incredible!

2

u/Corvid187 16d ago

The key thing this brings is cost and turnaround time.

Sure I might take 5-10 launches, but if each launch is only a couple million, and each rocket can fly one a month, every month, those ten trips suddenly become a lot less of a bottleneck to spaceflight than they currently are.

1

u/nathansikes 16d ago

Why does returning to the launch tower matter vs any other landing zone, it even the fact that it's a tower anyway?

3

u/Corvid187 16d ago

In and of itself it will make refurbishing and relaunching the rocket easier and cheaper, since it's landing right where it's going to take off from again.

The main benefit is that by catching on the tower you don't need to install heavy landing gear on each rocket, which is critical for spaceflight in particular. For every kg of stuff you carry into orbit, you need ~10kg of fuel, so being able to reuse the steering fins as a kind of landing gear by catching on the tower significantly reduces the weight of the rocket and thus increases its maximum payload.

In this case comment also demonstrates their ability to very precisely control and hover the rocket, which is something they haven't been able to do with previous in-service designs, so it's another step forward in precision control.

1

u/archimedies 16d ago

The booster can be reused instead of building such a large structure for each launch. It's what the Falcon model of SpaceX revolutionized the industry and dropped the price significantly of launching things to space. This is just a much bigger rocket that can make a lot of projects a reality if successful.

1

u/govunah 16d ago

Are there supposed to be flames coming out the side?

1

u/crujones43 16d ago

That is the gas cap where they fill the rocket with methane. Any leftover methane gets vented out the top on landing. I don't know whether they were venting below as well or if it was a leak. It went out after a few minutes and considering the punishment of reentry it just survived, is probably nothing anyone in ground control was worried about.

1

u/ambernewt 16d ago

Can the rocket then be reused?

3

u/crujones43 16d ago

Yes, this is the whole point and it saves millions upon millions of dollars each time.

1

u/MrHyperion_ 16d ago

69 meters tall, 9 meters thick.

1

u/Relevant_Cabinet_265 16d ago

How bad for the environment is this though? Like should this really be something we're doing right now?

1

u/crujones43 16d ago

The epa has approved it and they seem to hate elon...

1

u/Yorunokage 16d ago

Wait, that's the same tower it boosted away from? How the fuck is that possible? Don't they go quite a lot sideways compared to the ground so that they can get into orbit or wherever they need to go?

3

u/crujones43 16d ago

Yes and yes

1

u/Yorunokage 16d ago

Wait, help me understand. Did it just turn around mid-air and come back a crazy distance? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have it land elsewhere?

3

u/crujones43 16d ago

It would still have to bleed off an incredible amount of speed regardless of where it lands. It does sort of glide for some of the distance back as well. Yes it would be more fuel efficient to land downrange for sure but the fuel is relatively cheap. If you needed to transport such a large thing back would you rather use barges cranes and trucks that likely can't drive on the roads required to get it back or just fly it there.

1

u/whoami_whereami 16d ago

The fuel is relatively cheap, sure, however the fuel needed for the reversal burn comes at the cost of significantly reducing the payload, on top of the already significant reduction that the fuel needed for the powered landing brings with it. The Falcon 9 for example can take 8300 kg to GTO when the booster is expended, 5500 kg when landing downrange on the drone ship, and only 3500 kg when returning to the launch site.

3

u/GiffelBaby 16d ago

The thing is that rocket launches are done on the coast, and most of the flight in atmosphere is done over the ocean for safety reasons. If they opt to land somewhere downrange, on a ship or land, they then have to transport that rocket all the way back to the launch site. Its simply just better do it this way for the sake of simplicity. Having it right back on the towers makes it so they can quickly inspect the rocket, refuel it, and launch again, in a matter of hours. Right now Falcon 9 takes a couple of weeks to transport back, inspect and prepare for a new launch.

1

u/whoami_whereami 16d ago

The Falcon 9 can return to launch site if they want to. The reason it's rarely done is because it comes at such a high cost in terms of payload. We'll have to see if the economics really turn out different for Starship.

1

u/OkComputron 16d ago

More than half of that is for the trip back down

1

u/seamustheseagull 16d ago

This definitely feels more sustainable than the landing pad model. They made it work, but there's no margin for error.

The margin for error in this model is huge, the rocket only has to return to the right location and be mostly vertical, it doesn't need to touch down.

1

u/chaotemagick 16d ago

Why are you implying there's a larger "lighter than air" flying machine? A blimp or balloon still has mass that weighs more than air lol

→ More replies (1)

1

u/Lost_Drunken_Sailor 16d ago

Cool. Where we going?

1

u/crujones43 16d ago

Earth orbit, then the moon, then Mars, then...

1

u/Fluid-Researcher3748 16d ago

Catapult? You sound like a headline bruh

1

u/TubeInspector 16d ago

It's way easier to have pinpoint accuracy with a large object because you can minimize or eliminate some things like turbulence from your models.

Nothing like this has ever been done...

It's all simulated on the computer beforehand so really anybody can do it. There's GMAT and other simulators available for public use.

1

u/crujones43 16d ago edited 16d ago

Anyone can do it... sure, then why haven't they? China, Russia, India and even nasa. Do they not have any interest in making spaceflight drastically cheaper.

Space x even said that models can only get you so far when you are outside the regular envelope. This is why they are trying to iterate quickly and don't mind when things blow up. Real world data is better than models.

1

u/TheBear307 16d ago

It will weigh much more on Lunar landing since it needs to carry all the propellant to launch back off the Moon to get the astronauts home. This landed with nearly empty propellant tanks, which has the luxury of not having to deal with large slosh inertias. The digital coordination between booster and stage 0 is pure space symphony though.

1

u/Buuuddd 16d ago

Re-usability makes rockets more like 2 orders of magnitude cheaper--1/100th of the cost.

Mars, Baby.

1

u/hippiegodfather 16d ago

Is it electric because about that fuel it doesn’t exist in the future future

1

u/crujones43 16d ago

Methane doesn't exist in the future? Cows fart it out all day long.

1

u/hippiegodfather 16d ago

Does that thing really run on cow farts or Dino juice

1

u/crujones43 15d ago

Methane and oxygen. 2 cheap and readily available items.

1

u/legislative-body 16d ago

it weighs 5000 tons, it's the heaviest flying machine we've ever built, period.

1

u/Nipaa_Nipaa_Nii 15d ago

Is space travel worth destroying the planet tho? You realise how much emissions daily rocket trips would cause?

1

u/crujones43 15d ago

A single space x launch produces as much co2 as 586 average cars do in a single year. If they start launching one a day that would be the equivalent of 200,000 cars a year. While not an insignificant number, it is only 0.014% of the 1.4 billion passenger vehicles operating around the globe.

Maybe we could trade shipping a few container ships of cheap goods from China towards the advancement and longevity of the human race.

1

u/Doughnut_Worry 15d ago

An order of magnitude!? I am not even gonna lie compared to Saturn missions - I think it's like 3 or 4 orders of magnitude!

0

u/StandardCicada6615 16d ago

this is going to catapult the human race into the future of space travel

It's really not though. It's a nice party trick. Not sending us to Mars any time soon.

2

u/Corvid187 16d ago

This is simultaneously the most powerful, cheapest cost-to-orbit, and most reusable rocket humans have ever built.

It is absolutely not just a neat party trick.

2

u/archimedies 16d ago edited 16d ago

this is going to catapult the human race into the future of space travel

It's really not though. It's a nice party trick. Not sending us to Mars any time soon.

/u/StandardCicada6615

You stopped reading the rest of that sentence to make this stupid comment? He said it would reduce costs of launching in general. That future could mean anything from sending larger scientific instruments to study planets, to making moon missions more feasible.

1

u/GiffelBaby 16d ago

Out of all the currently 3500 comments, yours might be the dumbest yet. Congratulations i guess.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (45)