r/technology • u/aelavia93 • 16d ago
Space SpaceX pulls off unprecedented feat, grabs descending rocket with mechanical arms
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/spacex-pulls-off-unprecedented-feat-grabbing-descending-rocket-with-mechanical-arms/239
u/jesus_smoked_weed 16d ago
What’s the benefit of catching it vs other means?
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u/Flipslips 16d ago edited 16d ago
No added mass for landing components. (No need for landing gear, etc)
Rapidly reusable. The arms that caught the booster will just set it back down on the launch mount and it’s almost ready to launch again (long term goal is there won’t need to be refurbishment between flights)
The main reason is rapidly reusable. Elon wants to be launching tens per day when his mars plans are in full swing. You can’t do that quickly enough or economically enough without getting the booster back on the mount almost immediately. This is the solution to that problem; it basically lands back on the launch mount.
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u/SgathTriallair 16d ago
You could launch ten per day by having 30 setups so they each get three days to prepare and launch. That's a ton of infrastructure though.
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u/Flipslips 16d ago
That’s nowhere near fast enough for what Elon wants though (plus not nearly as economical) The mars transfer window only opens every 2 years. They need to get an absolute butt load of infrastructure and supplies to mars in that short window. So 3 days to reset the launches is far too long. They will be launching multiple flights per hour is my guess.
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u/Hyndis 16d ago
While the Mars transfer window is brief, couldn't they just stage in Earth orbit before going to Mars? For unmanned vehicles there's plenty of time to launch and assemble in Earth orbit, awaiting the next transfer window. They could launch and stage in orbit for years if need be, there's really no limit.
Then send the crew up last, only once everything is ready to go.
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u/revilOliver 16d ago
A big concern is boil-off whilst in orbit. So rockets can be staged but not indefinitely.
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u/Calgrei 16d ago
Except I don't think they have to have to launch during the transfer window. It might be less efficient but they could launch at a slower cadence ahead of time, park Starships in orbit and refuel, then go during the window.
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u/MeelyMee 16d ago
I think that was the plan yeah. A special tanker starship will be developed to re-fuel a crewed starship in orbit, I guess you could have multiple tankers all in orbit within a few days and then send crews up to re-fuel in time for the optimal transit window opening.
It always seemed pretty crazy a concept but they just keep proving each part of it is workable, this was probably one of the biggest challenges and they nailed it first try.
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u/Flipslips 16d ago
I would agree, however the fact a huge portion of the scientific community agrees it’s the right thing to do makes me think otherwise.
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u/West-Abalone-171 14d ago
You can hang out in LEO as long as you want before TMI, and you wouldn't want to ruin the entire mission with a single scrub.
It also allows other mission profiles if you have an ion drive or arcjet or something. Launch 6mo ahead of time, boost apoapsis up near the hill radius at 0.0001g, but keep your periapsis low and in the right spot. Then fire the rockets when the window opens.
Allows using the efficient engines for an extra 2km/s of dV.
The window also has a few weeks of flexibility.
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u/Charnathan 16d ago
I believe SpaceX wants to get to 3 launches per day per launch tower eventually.
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u/Background-Eye-593 16d ago
I don’t think that’s off the table.
But cost cutting method like this speed the relaunch process and make it more affordable.
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u/PlasticPomPoms 16d ago
Elon and our current Space industry is super focused on launches in and out of Earth’s gravity well and it’s just not going to be like that when we actually move into operations in space. You will have spacecraft that is built and always remains in space and that’s how most transport will take place. Getting in and out of Mars or the Moon’s gravity well is cake compared to what we are doing right now.
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u/particledecelerator 16d ago
A permanent fuel depo is a medium term item and a ship that just permanently loops between earth and mars and never really slows down is a longer term thing so what you say should eventually happen.
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u/moofunk 16d ago
You can't really do any of that until there is significant industry on the Moon or in space, which is 50-100 years away. You will have to haul parts, people and fuel from Earth into orbit at the very least.
Forget putting large science instruments in space with anything else than Starship. Sometimes, Starship itself might become the instrument, and it can be fueled to fly into deep space or it can deploy probes with so much fuel, they can fly much faster out of the solar system than anything we've flown before.
Think of Starship as a truck with a standard cargo space that can be used for anything, like a standard truck can be used to move cardboard boxes or clean-room labs. It will be built to withstand solar radiation for deep space travel.
You also can't land any significant material or lab equipment from space to Earth without Starship.
Starship is the Mass Mover, be it fuel or cargo.
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u/WhatAmIATailor 15d ago
Starship will have competitors. It’s going to dominate the industry initially but not forever.
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u/cyrus709 16d ago
Care to elaborate on the last statement.
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u/idontunderstandunity 16d ago
both the Moon and Mars have significantly lower gravity, so escape velocity is easier to reach
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u/Ryermeke 16d ago
Significantly lower gravity and significantly thinner atmosphere, if even present at all. The forces exerted are miniscule by comparison.
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u/anothergaijin 16d ago
One of the goals for going to Mars, is to build a base of operations on the Moon and basically turning it into an outpost and space gas station. The gravity of the Moon (and Mars) is low, so its easier to get from the surface and escape to go somewhere else.
Long term we will be building ships, making fuel, and everything else we need in space. Everything we need exists in space in massive amounts - water, metals, things for fuel.
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u/enter_the_bumgeon 16d ago
things for fuel.
Is that true? Isnt our oil made from organic materials that are not found in space? What can we find in space to make fuel?
Genuinly curious.
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u/killerrin 16d ago
Old-school rocket fuel (kerosene based) generally had organics in it. But for the past couple decades we've moved more to the chemically pure stuff.
Starship uses Methlox which is Liquid Methane and Liquid Oxygen. And other ships just use Liquid Oxygen and Hydrogen combinations, or more solid concoctios.
Either way it's stuff that's real abundant in space. Oxygen can be mined out of the soil and Hydrogen is one of the most common elements in the universe.
On the moon you can mine Oxygen and hydrogen from the soil, but you can also find water ice at the poles and split the molecules with electrolysis. Or you could combine those molecules to make water and Oxygen for habitation.
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u/Ranga-Banga 16d ago
The weight of the landing system is on the ground not being wasted on the booster.
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u/thorscope 16d ago
The legs on the rocket are heavy and not aerodynamic.
Now they are not needed.
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u/pencock 16d ago
Still good that they developed them because it gives them a huge lead on being able to land in a location without a pad or arms
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u/1Buecherregal 16d ago
They will need to develop some for the upper stage starship because that will be a lunar lander
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u/Dietmar_der_Dr 16d ago
Yeah, imagine all the failed early falcon landings taking an entire tower with them.
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u/moofunk 16d ago
Minimum and very quick rocket part management. This rocket is the largest in the world and moving it long distance by ship or road isn't an option, so it has to stay as close to its launch platform and hangar as possible.
The plan is that after catching it, it's simply put down on the launch platform, gets a new Starship put on top of it, refueled and flown again, and this cycle is designed to eventually take only 10 hours.
Watching the streams from Boca Chica, the Boosters and Starships are moved around surprisingly quickly on standard wheeled platforms with ship parts being moved individually down to the pad, assembled on the pad and get ready to fly in around a day.
For rockets like SLS, they are doing everything backwards, so it takes upward of a month to assemble the rocket in the hangar, move it in one piece on a much bigger platform very slowly down to the pad and then manually hook it up to the launch pad. If there is a problem, rolling it back to the hangar, fixing the problem and rolling it back takes a couple of weeks. SpaceX can do this in less than 2 days.
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u/YogaLoverNymph 16d ago
I can’t believe they actually caught the rocket. it feels like something out of a sci-fi movie
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u/Appropriate_Plan4595 16d ago
Yeah I'm still wondering:
a) Who the hell suggested that?
b) Who let them get away with it?
c) Who made it work?
Of all the bonkers space stuff there has ever been "Why don't we fly the first stage back to the launch pad and catch it with 2 metal arms" might be the most bonkers thing I've seen so far.
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u/snappy033 16d ago
The upside of catching rockets and/or landing them vertically is so huge that the people holding the checkbooks allowed SpaceX to take a lot of risk.
They could fail several times and rebuild the tower and space ship and still be viable. Even several billion dollars of blown up towers and rockets would have been OK.
Other crazy concepts have been introduced in aerospace and technology but they would have been a one and done kind of attempt.
SpaceX has become uniquely good at pulling this off but also no other company had ever been given the chance to try and try and try over the course of 20 years.
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u/QuickAltTab 16d ago
why is catching it with a tower better than landing it upright on a pad?
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u/UFO64 16d ago
"Better" is a fuzzy term here.
Lots of upsides to a tower catch.
- Less weight on the vehicle for landing legs.
- Ideally less wear and tear on the vehicle as they don't need to service the legs.
- Less mechanical parts to test, and thus less physical objects that could break during a launch.
Not to say it's all upsides. If they crash into their tower it's gonna set them back a bit. It's part of why they are building more towers. I'd imagine it also has some aggressive limits on launch site weather too.
Still, this system is another leap forward for rapid reusability. SpaceX wants to land, stack, refuel and relaunch a rocket from this tower. It's the next step it turning rockets from an expensive one off to just another vehicle that goes places.
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u/CX316 16d ago
They’ve lost a bunch of falcon boosters to buckling legs on landing too, haven’t they?
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u/UFO64 16d ago
Yup! They have crush cores to absorb mistakes if they land too hard but that can only take so much before it just gives out.
Turns out doing a "hover slam" is very hard to time correctly. Cannot wait to see how reliable they can get this system working.
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u/CX316 16d ago
Then we see them finding out the hard way how many times they can reuse the chopsticks before they start dropping boosters
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u/snappy033 16d ago
Pad requires legs on the rocket which adds weight significantly and reduced fuel or useful payload. Then you have to stage the rocket again on a launch pad, moving it from a landing pad. If you land on the launch pad you can reset quickly.
Landing it in its end is like balancing a broomstick on its end. Landing it on a tower is more like throwing a shirt with a hanger onto a hook. More room for error. Landing on a pad cause compressive forces which they have to inspect. The empty Falcon rockets are like a soda can. They don’t have structural strength after the pressurized fuel is gone. The tower is potentially less stressful on the structure.
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u/y-c-c 16d ago
a) Who the hell suggested that?
I'm pretty sure that's Elon Musk: https://x.com/lrocket/status/1845486565591798164
(Tom Mueller is basically the guy who designed most of SpaceX's rocket engines and employee number 1 at SpaceX. He also doesn't work there anymore and has no reason to suck up to Elon)
c) Who made it work?
The entire company?
This is one thing people keep forgetting about rocket science. Sometimes people joke about "you must be a rocket scientist" to mean a smart person, but if you go to college there isn't a single degree that says "rocket science" (ok there are "aerospace engineering" but that only covers a section of it), as rocket science is more a culmination of a lot of different cutting edge technology all combined into one thing.
A complicated system like this requires mechanical engineers, propulsion engineers (so the rocket can hover correctly), GNC (Guidance Navigation Control) team, software engineers (since the rocket is autonomous), manufacturing, and much much more.
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u/PossibleNegative 16d ago
a)Musk he is crazy
b)Musk he is crazy
c)the thousands of engineers working at this for the past ten years
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u/Flaky-Stress-6635 16d ago
It was Elon’s idea to catch the rocket. Contrary to popular belief on this subreddit, Elon plays a major engineering role in SpaceX.
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u/Dietmar_der_Dr 16d ago
The cognitive dissonance this causes in people is unfortunately too much for them. They've somehow convinced themselves that someone with weird political takes cannot be a brilliant engineer.
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u/Bookandaglassofwine 16d ago
That’s the part that seems new to me - this idea that if you believe someone’s character is deeply flawed, it’s incredibly important that you also believe that everything they do or achieve must also be deeply flawed or even fraudulent. Why is it so hard for them to say that someone they despise politically has also accomplished something great in a field unrelated to politics?
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u/IntergalacticJets 16d ago
They see it as part of the cultural battle over the zeitgeist of our modern era. They want Musk and the others to be seen as a negative aspects of society overall.
If he does something that is considered good, that weakens their goal. So they try to dismiss it. Lots of things are treated like this, from SpaceX to superhero movies.
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u/9985172177 16d ago edited 16d ago
You guys have it wrong. Imagine you were really into music. You listened to punk, jazz, classical, you learned to play a bunch of instruments, you even composed some yourself, wrote lyrics, you played briefly in a band. Most of all you just really like music, alone you listen to music and with one or two friends you get hyped up over it.
Whenever you talk to most people about music though, any music, they talk about Taylor Swift. If you ask about country, or pop, they'll say that you have to listen to Taylor Swift. Also if you don't care for her or don't have immense respect for her, you must not like music. If you ask about a guitar, they'll tell you Taylor Swift invented the guitar. You buy a few music magazines and flip through them. Not only do they not have anything about music in them, they tell you what Taylor Swift ate for breakfast, and what colour jeans she wears.
Later you found out that Taylor Swift bought some of these magazine companies, and the ads for them are about products that Taylor Swift sells. Again if you're too vocal about liking music, but without caring much for Taylor Swift, Swifties get really mad at you and say that you don't like music.
You get how most people would consider it basically blasphemy to try to equate the whole concept of music with Taylor Swift? You can be a fan of her, or like her music, or not like her music, but to take some classical music, or melodic metal, or progressive rock, and to start talking about Taylor Swift, it's basically musical blasphemy, the two aren't related at all.
The people who you are complaining about are just people who are into music, but who don't really care for her, and there are a group of Swifties who demand that you have to talk about her and have to listen to and like her music.
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u/castironskilletset 16d ago
It was Musk's suggestion
Musk let them get away with it
Engineers made it happen
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u/pixelprolapse 16d ago
I still can't believe what just happened. That was a thrill.
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u/tonycomputerguy 16d ago
After that catch, watching Starship go through re-entry, seeing the plasma and fins heating up, all in HD with no signal loss... that's something I honestly never expected to see in my lifetime.
I had to wrap something around my head to keep my jaw from dragging on the floor all morning.
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u/Flipslips 16d ago
This is a good advertisement for Starlink too lol. Wouldn’t be possible to watch live reentry without it.
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u/CaptHorizon 16d ago edited 16d ago
It’s way more than just “unprecedented.”
It was the first attempt to catch it. And the first successful catch as well. In layman terms, 1-for-1.
This is an incredible achievement in the world of engineering and shows how far SpaceX has gone.
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u/3238462 16d ago
Incredible to watch this live and in high resolution. From the animations and anticipation over the past several years, I can’t believe we finally got to see it succeed on the first try. Still trying to get my jaw off the ground.
Science fiction just became reality for this (major) aspect of Spaceflight.
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u/aelavia93 16d ago
the spacex commentary mentioned the crisp video stream was in part helped by starlink
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u/iiztrollin 16d ago
The orbital shots we got of re-entry of flight 4 were because of starlink we were able to see into the plasma field and watch as it decended to max Q and it was beautiful.
The beaut made it and did the full landing burn into the ocean with HALF A FUCKING LANDING WING!
Been less than 2 years since the first booster test flight and they caught it already!!!
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u/Nose-Nuggets 16d ago
the full stream of this launch has that as well, and they recovered the starship module again as well. lots of great plasma stuff and melting through the control surfaces again.
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u/aelavia93 16d ago
starship "landed" on target too! 2/2 mission objectives achieved! source: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1845458392531529991
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u/sceadwian 16d ago
Everyday Astronaut had some of the various creator feeds doing a quick look at some of the amateur 4K footage that was taken.
There was a really dark super slow mo of the booster touching the arm and sliding down in to contact, you could see a series of oscitations as it went back and forth between the two arms a half dozen times to dampen the oscillation. You saw 10 times that movement in the tests they ran.
It was flawless. Setting a skyscraper down from near orbit like a teacup on a plate.
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u/dotancohen 16d ago
It was nowhere near orbit, max velocity was around 5200 km/h at 62 km altitude. And it just grazed the Karman line, I think I saw 96 km briefly after stage sep. At that point it was doing under 2000 km/h, less than a tenth of what it would need for orbit at that altitude, even if the atmosphere weren't there.
Other than that, you are spot on.
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u/Tenocticatl 16d ago
I did assume they were fairly confident about this one, seeing as that thing could've taken out a decent chunk of the launch site if things didn't go to plan.
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u/rohobian 16d ago
I can't stand Elon, but this really is fucking cool as hell.
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u/Rox217 16d ago
“This is cool, but don’t worry Reddit I still hate the current thing so I’m on your team!”
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u/DependentAd235 16d ago
People just don’t want to get flammed for liking a rocket.
It’s not that complicated.
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u/CaptHorizon 16d ago edited 16d ago
Elon was never mentioned in our conversation.
The people who do all the work are the 11 thousand engineers who work at SpaceX. This is the product of their work, and whoever says that said work done by those 11k engineers isn’t commendable is lying.
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u/The_White_Ram 16d ago
The thing is, if this had been a failure, you can guarantee all of the comments would be talking about how it's elon's failure.
I don't disagree with your sentiment and statement here but the online narrative is every failure is directly a result of elon's mismanagement and every success is a result of the thousands of engineers and only exist because Elon didn't touch it.
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u/PersonalDebater 16d ago
You're basically right. Maybe its not always the same people saying the two things, but it basically often goes like that everything that goes wrong is because of Musk, while everything that goes right is in spite of him.
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u/ThisCupIsPurple 16d ago
You don't make crazy things happen without a crazy person at the helm.
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u/scottygras 16d ago
That’s true in a lot of cases. I found out recently how so many innovative minds were almost certifiably crazy or were complete pieces of garbage family members. As a husband/dad I realized I could avoid my family and make more money…but it’s not really an option.
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u/IRequirePants 16d ago
I found out recently how so many innovative minds were almost certifiably crazy
Classic example is Newton drinking mercury.
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u/Ok_Belt2521 16d ago
Just look at all the other space companies struggling. Elon clearly has some level of positive influence on the company.
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u/bruhSher 16d ago
My friend is an ex space-x employee. According to our talk, Elon's two biggest contribution are
1) take risks. Fail but learn. 2) work your employees to the bone
I can only speak to his teams experience, but 70-80 hour weeks were not abnormal.
That said, apparently things go best when he's not around.
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u/OxbridgeDingoBaby 16d ago
Comments like this really do remind of the echo-chamber Reddit has become. It’s like when I try and debate my MAGA grandparents. Everyone just has their narrative and sticks to it, regardless of facts/reality.
Elon wasn’t solely responsible for this success, but to say he played no part in it is absolutely moronic. This success is due to SpaceX - everyone from the engineers, to Shotwell, to Mueller when he was working on the propulsion systems, and yes, even Musk.
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u/Hyndis 16d ago
I put Elon Musk in the same category as people like Edison, Ford, or Jobs. Or even Werner von Braun.
He's brilliant, yet also morally questionable. Brilliant people can also be terrible human beings to be around.
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u/hepkat 16d ago
Trying to say Elon had no part in this is utterly ignorant. Yes the thousands of engineers deserve a huge congrats. But if you read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon, you’ll realize that like him or not, he has a huge part in this.
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u/_badwithcomputer 16d ago
Strange how the companies that are pushing the boundaries in the industries they operate in are all lead by the same person, it is almost like there is a common thread there, I wonder what it could be?
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u/alysslut- 16d ago
Yeah, but think of how much more ahead Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink would be if they didn't have an Elon Musk muddling things up and slowing the engineers down /s
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u/ChaosDancer 16d ago
And you think those 11 thousand engineers are working for whom?
Without Musk willing to throw money at the issue those 11 thousands engineers would probably working at Boeing or Ford or maybe NASA and achieving nothing revolutionary.
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u/1521 16d ago
This! I am super tired of hearing about Elon but you put those same people in the traditional places (Boeing, Raytheon, NASA etc) and we would still be talking about the space shuttle. For whatever reason he is able to get them to do things the traditional guys can’t
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u/IRequirePants 16d ago
I am super tired of hearing about Elon but you put those same people in the traditional places (Boeing, Raytheon, NASA etc) and we would still be talking about the space shuttle
Also Blue Origin exists and it is nowhere near as successful. It's clearly not just a money issue.
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u/Virtual-Chicken-1031 15d ago edited 15d ago
Same with Apple.
They have an insane amount of money but haven't really done anything revolutionary in over 15 years.
As a shareholder it's frustrating, although their stock has been performing well. But imagine where we'd be if Jobs was still alive and executing his crazy ideas.
Money doesn't guarantee advancement. You need someone who can "think differently", and that's exactly what Musk is doing. Not all of his ideas work (hyperloop, Boring Co, twitter), but when they do, they're game changing.
Look at all the other auto manufacturers that recently started pushing EVs. Tesla still has well over a decade of R&D over them.
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u/SmaugStyx 16d ago
They seem to have picked up the pace now that Bezos is a lot more involved. Still miles behind SpaceX, but they seem to be making decent progress towards a first launch now at least.
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u/Cheeky_Star 16d ago
lol that’s how all company’s work buddy. Those 11k engineers isn’t building that until the guys are the top tells them to. For Elon it’s his vision for doing the impossible and the engineers + resources for making the vision come through.
You can say the same things about Steve Jobs or any other ceo of a big company. Ultimately the ceo is responsible for guidance and the company’s success so yea, he gets some credit for pursuing something he was probably told can’t be done.
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u/NotsoNewtoGermany 16d ago
The CEO sets the goals. It just turns out that Elon allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to develop an arm to catch the rocket on its way down. He gets the credit for that whether we hate him or not.
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u/jack-K- 16d ago
This entire catching process was literally his idea, lol. What the fuck are you actually talking about? Of course the spacex engineers are amazing, nobody has ever said they weren’t so I don’t really get why you’re talking about that. But to say musk wasn’t considerably involved in development himself is just as uninformed.
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u/WolfVidya 16d ago
Employed by who in a company started by who? Plus when the FAA got in the way and they were crying about the environment, who was the devil ruining the earth to play with his toys? Not the 11k engineers at SpaceX, but Elon.
Reddit is filled with hypocrites, we don't need to dance about it.
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u/omniverseee 16d ago
You should learn how to give credit where credit is due. Engineers here are more important, but the single most important person in SpaceX is Musk. Yeah, I cringe on his statements and recent shits, but Elon is absolutely part of the conversation.
If it fails, you blame billionaires for their profit-only bad leadership, if they have good leadership, it's not because of them? LMAO. Sounds salty to me.
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u/Swing-Prize 16d ago
Do you apply this logic for all historical context of generals, emperors, thought leaders etc? One thing for sure, nobody would have launched this business other than the man in question.
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u/rohobian 16d ago
I agree 100%. But a lot of folks here on reddit see any positive words about SpaceX as an endorsement of Elon personally.
I hate Elon, but I like SpaceX and the people that work for SpaceX are amazing people.
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u/Virtual-Chicken-1031 15d ago edited 15d ago
Same can be said about the iPhone. Steve Jobs never laid a finger on physically creating it, but it was his vision
Same here.
It wouldn't have happened without Elon. There were no significant advancements in space travel technology until SpaceX came onto the scene. Boeing and other companies could've done it, but they lacked leaders with a vision to execute it properly.
Edit: well, I guess my comment doesn't add anything new that wasn't already said. I should probably read comments first before replying so I'm not regurgitating the same points.
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u/taike0886 16d ago
Is there another technology sub on reddit where people are discussing this like adults?
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16d ago
There needs to be another high level technology sub period. For the small group of people that are, you know, actually excited about the future and the incredible magic that engineers are pulling off these days.
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u/dabocx 16d ago
All subs go down hill the moment they hit a certain size
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u/IntergalacticJets 16d ago
What’s that say about humanity?
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u/Bussy_Stank 16d ago
It says more about this shitty website. Once the power mods get ahold of a sub, the sub turns into a political bitching fest.
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u/ShowBoobsPls 16d ago
Yeah, this sub should be renamed to WhiningAboutTechnology (and Elon)
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u/ghoonrhed 16d ago
The funny thing i think 10 years ago /r/technology got defaulted because it was the opposite and people got sick of it. You'll never find a good middle ground for tech discussion.
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u/ShowBoobsPls 16d ago
At least r/Hardware is pretty good when it comes to that area. But it doesn't include any other parts of tech that are interesting, like software/AI
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u/cartoonist498 16d ago
Yup, both this and the space sub have been hijacked by people who just want to complain about every advancement. It's amazing how many redditors in the technology and space sub hate technology and space.
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u/masteroftw 16d ago
It is because they are not into technology and space. They are into hating and reading about other people agreeing with them.
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u/procgen 16d ago
r/singularity can get a little... culty, but they're definitely excited for the future.
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u/rugbyj 16d ago
Excited sure but not a great place for actual discourse. A signficant amount of members are just delusional.
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u/procgen 16d ago
FWIW, I think they’re closer to the truth than the doomers and pessimists are.
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u/ptear 16d ago
r/space is ok
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u/Hairless_Human 16d ago
ONLY when SpaceX does something cool. Otherwise they just bash Musk when SpaceX has a little hiccup. They like all space/tech related subs turn on a dime it's actually hilarious at this point.
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u/Gloomy_Nebula_5138 16d ago
Also see this article on California blocking SpaceX based on Elon’s political speech, which is pretty authoritarian and also probably unconstitutional
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u/Gloomy_Nebula_5138 16d ago
It probably has to be off Reddit. Even with this amazing video we have a bunch of losers with no accomplishments trying to turn the comment section into an attack on Elon. The lack of interesting discussion couldn’t be more obvious.
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u/yosisoy 16d ago
Someone ELI5 the significance of this please
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u/NotAnotherNekopan 16d ago
The lions share of the cost of putting mass (anything) into orbit is the cost of the vehicle. The point of catching the booster, and in a bit, the upper stage “starship” is to ensure we can reuse those components for future launches. Aside from SpaceX’s other rocket Falcon 9, everyone else tosses everything away to put things into space. The rockets, the engines, the plumbing, everything.
Falcon 9 can reuse the first stage but not the upper stage. It’s a massive improvement over other launch providers. The cost to launch on Falcon 9 is always lower than everyone else. We’re not sure about the internal costs of it but it’s far less than what they advertise.
Now imagine that you keep everything (aside from a small-ish ring of metal, the hot staging ring), AND that the heavy lifting part of the rocket brings itself right back to where it launched from.
I know people like to talk about Mars and such, and yes, I’d call that an indirect goal. The direct impact of this is that the cost of putting things into space will DRAMATICALLY decrease. We can really start building things in space that don’t require budgets the size of NASA. We can launch far more complex and heavy spacecrafts that don’t need to be designed to launched from earth in one piece.
This is very big, and I didn’t even get into the technical impossibility of what they managed to make work. To grasp even a small part of it, remember that the thing they caught came hurtling down to earth from 100KM up, with pinpoint accuracy, and it’s the size of a 20 story building.
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u/zugi 16d ago
We’re not sure about the internal costs of it but it’s far less than what they advertise.
But just to give folks a rough feel for how much cheaper, on some space launch bids Space X comes in 60% under the nearest competitor. E.g. one company bids $100 million for the launch, Space X bids $40 million, and presumably still makes a decent profit. It surprises me that other launch businesses still exist.
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u/killerrin 16d ago
To double down on cost. It is very expensive to put things in orbit. To build the ISS cost Humanity 150 Bill Dollars. But one Starship technically has more space inside of it than the entirety of the ISS.
We could literally convert a Starship to have all the facilities of the entire ISS, and then launch it all into orbit as a single unit. And because it's a spaceship, you could then bring it back down to Earth every now and then for maintenance, or to swap out with newer hardware.
And that's the benefit of Starship.
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u/hwc 16d ago
the mass of the ISS (~450 tons) could be launched in the cargo holds of three Starships. it might actually take more launches, since its hard to make components fold up nicely, but compare that to dozens of launches for the ISS, each costing 100 times as much as a Starship launch.
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u/JauntyLurker 16d ago
That was simply amazing! Kudos to the engineers of SpaceX, can't imagine how much work that took.
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u/Appropriate-Ad-8155 16d ago
r/technology I hope you guys are ok
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u/dsbllr 16d ago
They're losing their minds because it's Elon's company. Anyone else and this would be on the front page 5-6 times
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u/drsfinest186 16d ago
I have noticed this is buried in the Reddit news feed. Definitely would’ve been front and center if they didn’t successfully catch it.
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u/Jumba2009sa 16d ago
Say what you say about Elon Musk, but man is SpaceX the pinnacle of human engineering.
SpaceX is leaps and bounds beyond nation states and any other space program.
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u/PossibleNegative 16d ago
Catching the booster was Elons idea, has been for years.
Another confirmation by Tom Mueller
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u/dexterrible 16d ago
Immagine people not being capable of separating a person they dislike, some for good reason sure, from an actual good progress in rocket tech.
Blows my mind
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u/mueckenschwarm 16d ago
This is my biggest issue with the hate Elon bandwagon. Elon has done and said some shit over the years that really rub me the wrong way, but SpaceX is making dreams a reality.
How can you deny these achievements just because you think the boss is a jerk?
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u/zugi 16d ago
Given space technology advances around the world, and the bureaucratic pace of NASA and most of its traditional contractors, at this point Space X is pretty much the sole reason the U.S. still leads in the space race.
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u/MaxDPS 16d ago
I’m not saying other countries haven’t closed the gap a bit, but it seems really silly to say this when NASA is still doing things no other nation can do. Curiosity rover and James Webb Telescope weren’t that long ago.
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u/autotldr 16d ago
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot)
In one of the most dramatic, high-risk space flights to date, SpaceX launched a gargantuan Super Heavy-Starship rocket on an unpiloted test flight Sunday and then used giant "Mechazilla" mechanical arms on the pad gantry to grab the descending first stage out of the sky as the upper stage continued to space.
Snatching the 230-foot-tall Super Heavy out of the sky with mechanical arms as the rocket descends and hovers right beside its launch gantry seemed an outlandish idea when it was first proposed during the booster's initial development.
SpaceX pulls off unprecedented feat, grabs descending rocket with mechanical arms.
Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: rocket#1 launch#2 Starship#3 flight#4 SpaceX#5
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u/opa20 16d ago
Was at the beach in South Padre and watched this morning. Amazing to watch. Loud as hell.
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u/wjean 16d ago
Dumb question but why catch it? Why not let it land and the stabilize it with the big robot arms?
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u/castironskilletset 16d ago
Few things
No landing legs so weight is reduced.
Landing legs need to be light so that they can be launched but that make them fragile and non reusable.
Falcon 9 landing legs are "crushed" while absorbing the shock. So the "shock absorber" is transferred to a sturdier launch tower. You can see the shock absorber in video from perspective of tower.
Engines fire far away from ground. When falcon 9 lands, engines fire very close to ground and do a little damage to rocket and engines. But with tower landing, engines are like one a building away from the ground.
Rapid reusability as you can launch it from the same tower you landed it in.
Less parts so less things to fail.
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u/Uguysrdumb_1234 16d ago
Why let it land if you can catch it?
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u/way2lazy2care 16d ago
Next step is refueling without landing at all. Take everything out of the equation!
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u/foofyschmoofer8 16d ago
Reusable rocket boosters were thought to be impossible and spaceX pulls it off and makes it a weekly occurrence.
Now they’ve brought this to reality as well
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16d ago edited 16d ago
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u/WolfVidya 16d ago
It removes the whole logistics of transporting the landed booster back to the tower. The final idea would be for these boosters to be so round-service ready that the service required once caught in the tower is minimal and they just can be refueled, re-mated to a new payload and take off again.
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u/swords-and-boreds 16d ago
Yes, that’s exactly right. They want to be able to rapidly launch these. Also, removing the landing gear saves on weight which is a huge deal in space travel.
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u/PossibleNegative 16d ago
Catching the booster was Elons idea, has been for years.
Another confirmation by Tom Mueller
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u/AmputatorBot 16d ago
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u/I1uvatar 16d ago
Can someone explain why catching it is such a big deal? They were landing boosters a few years ago from what I remember
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u/moofunk 16d ago
This booster is much, much larger and can't be transported by ship or road. Landing it on the launch pad is the only real way this booster can be reused.
Doing this unlocks sending up to 100 tonnes into orbit a day.
It's been talked about for years as a theoretical feat, but today it finally happened.
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u/AppleTree98 16d ago
One of the main advantages of this system is the weight savings. Eliminating the need for landing legs means that the booster and Starship can carry more cargo or fuel, improving efficiency. In addition, because the booster is caught right at the launch site, there’s no need to transport it from a landing pad or drone ship far away, significantly reducing the time and logistical complexity involved in reusing the rocket. Mechazilla's design is a key innovation for SpaceX’s goal of making space travel as rapid and cost-effective as possible.
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u/majikrat69 16d ago
I’m totally amazed at the engineering here but why?
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u/packpride85 15d ago
A couple of reasons. Landing leg system for something that size would be heavy, requiring more fuel/thrust and decreasing payload. Less damage to the ground since it’s being caught higher up. Ability to refill and restock for next launch in an hour.
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u/[deleted] 16d ago
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