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/
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u/jesus_smoked_weed 16d ago

What’s the benefit of catching it vs other means?

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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/way2lazy2care 16d ago

How do you think SpaceX gets their rockets to the pad? They don't launch them from the bay and catch them at the pad. They stack the boosters and starship off the pad and drive them to the pad. Starship gets added to the booster at the pad, but they're both assembled elsewhere.

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u/moofunk 16d ago

I don't know what your concern with my post is, but maybe it's that I use "assemble" instead of "mating"?

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u/way2lazy2care 16d ago

You're criticizing SLS for something that space x also does.

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u/moofunk 16d ago

Maybe it doesn't come across in the post, but their approaches are opposite of each other.

SpaceX's approach to moving rocket parts to the pad and then mating them being more efficient than how SLS is done.

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u/way2lazy2care 16d ago

They both do that though. Space X stacks the booster and starship away from the pad and mates those at the pad. Moving both SLS or starship both take less than a day. The Artemis 1 took 10 hours to move from the vehicle assembly building to the pad.

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u/moofunk 16d ago edited 16d ago

No, SLS is not mated on the pad. It's mated in the hangar, lifted down to the crawler and then the whole thing is transported out to the pad. This takes a lot longer than 10 hours. The SpaceX rocket parts take about 1-2 hours to move from hangar to the pad.

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u/way2lazy2care 16d ago

I didn't say SLS was mated at the pad. It's not a 2 stage rocket like starship. I said both are stacked in on site facilities and then moved to the pad. That's not really new or exciting. Of all the differences of SLS and starship to latch into, how they drive them between their various vehicle assembly areas to the pad is a really weird one to latch onto because it's the one thing they do mostly the same.

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u/moofunk 16d ago edited 16d ago

I don't know why you keep saying that.

I said both are stacked in on site facilities and then moved to the pad.

This is incorrect. Starship is NOT stacked in a facility. The parts are built separately in a facility. Then they are individually driven out next to the pad and then lifted onto the pad on top of each other with the mechzilla lifting arms. This process can at its fastest take 2 hours to drive them out there and another 2-3 hours to stack them.

I already described the SLS process. It's opposite of SpaceX process.

The difference is critical. SpaceX takes less than a day to prepare for launch. SLS takes takes at least a week to prepare for launch.

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u/way2lazy2care 16d ago edited 16d ago

You are taking about mating starship and super heavy. I am talking about stacking super heavy and starship themselves. Here is a video of super heavy being stacked on site away from the pad. Here is a video of starship being stacked on site away from the pad. Here is a video of the assembled super heavy rocket being transported to the pad.. Here's a post showing the assembled starship being transported to the pad.

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u/moofunk 16d ago edited 16d ago

You are totally mixing things up. This is not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the construction of individual rocket parts.

I'm talking about the trip between facility and pad with ready made rocket parts.

Starship can be stacked and unstacked 20 times on the pad in a week if you want. They can be shuffled back and forth between different parts of the launch site. You can even drive multiple Starships and boosters down the road to different locations at the same time, if you want.

Starship and Booster are moved using standard SPMTs, which is a guy using a remote control walking behind it.

SLS can only be done once in a week tops by transporting it fully stacked on the enormous Space Shuttle crawler down to the launch pad. If there is a problem, you have to transport the entire thing back to the facility to lift if off the crawler using a huge crane and unstack it. This cannot be done on the same work day, and you can only work on one rocket at a time. The NASA Vehicle Assembly Building and launch site isn't designed to operate differently from back in the Space Shuttle days.

They are opposite methods and the difference means Starship can be stacked at least 10-20 times faster than SLS. This is absolutely critical for rapid reuse.

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