Posted by ls612 1 hour ago
(And to preempt the obvious objection: yes, maybe you can call the Space Shuttle an "upper stage of a rocket" if you squint hard enough, but it didn't do upright landings, its external tank was not reusable and even the Shuttle itself was effectively rebuilt from scratch at exorbitant cost each time.)
It's sad to see a lot of media missing the point, eg as I type this BBC is reporting this as "SpaceX successfully catches part of Starship rocket on its return to Earth".
Edit: corrected to note that the SRBs were reusable, but the ET was not.
Notably, they were reusable! Sure, they had to refurbish them, same with the shuttle’s main engines. The only thing they threw away was the external tank which didn’t have any engines.
The SRBs of the shuttle landed by parachute and were recovered from the water and reused
SpaceX has now demonstrated all the pieces of a fully reusable launcher. Next comes putting them all together in the same flight, and hopefully demonstrating that the flights can become frequent and cheap. There’s no guarantee of that, but it’s looking good.
Why wouldn't it count? It is not the first time in the history of rocketry that the part that is not the boosters returns home intact.
Sure, you can say "it's the first time in the history of rocketry that it lands upright", but you could also say "it's the first time in the history of rocketry that it is not white".
If you want to say how huge this is, tell me how different it is from landing the boosters. Because from the outside it sure as hell looks very similar.
As for why it's harder to catch Starship than Super Heavy, where do I begin:
* Super Heavy is suborbital, its maximum velocity is far, far less than Starship.
* Super Heavy returns upright. The Starship does the famous but aerodynamically very complex "belly flop" to reduce speed.
* Super Heavy only has two static fins to guide it. Starship has four actively controlled fins that need to survive the extreme forces of launch and re-entry.
Nitpick- the SRBs were also recovered and reused
About how "huge" it is, I understand that it is economically huge: Musk will get even richer.
I would be interested in knowing how "huge" it is in terms of engineering. Like, my understanding is that they needed to invent new maths to go to the moon in the 60s. Does SpaceX compare with that, or is it "just" what you can do with a lot of money and powerful computers?
Genuinely interested, even though rocket fans will hate me for not knowing the answer and daring asking. Bring the downvotes!
Look its cool to see a catch like this, it doesn't necessarly feels that difficult tbh?
And I just don't get it? Is it cool to watch? yes, but whats the endgoal besides reducing costs for starlink and military stuff?
Also, remember how JWST had to do that incredibly complex and fiddly in-orbit expansion and alignment to fit together the mirror after launch? If Starship had been available at the time, this would have been far easier, since Starship has twice the diameter (four times the area) of the Ariane rocket they used to launch it.
But it feels like hyperbole.
Pure technically speaking, if you can fly a rocket up and control it properly, whats the crazy thing flying a rocket back down and controlling it?
Or do you see it more like a milestone seeing?
And for me, it still feels like if Elon Musk tries his Dataenter 'idea' and really sneds up everyday a Starship, we will lose a lot of control as normal humans whats going on in space and what will happen to our atmosphere.
You are absolutely right. Same thing about just putting a battery and some motors to make a car like RC car! Same about 48v/replacing canbus. Same thing about putting some satellites on orbit for internet! Same for mobile service! Same about if humans can use eyes to drive, computers should be able to using cameras! All _simple_ things, obvious in retrospect.
Yet one man is marching forward, poking his nose in industries he does not belong, and still almost always coming on top.
Makes you wonder why existing incumbents can't do these "simple" things.
Of course he is flexible enough mentally and ignorant enough to disrupt markets, sure and for this he got rich.
But why does every Musk follower ignore all the bad things he leaves in his march forward?
All the humans around the Space-X 'city'?
Kids and Humans affected by USAID and DOGE?
His lying around everything he promised to people?
It only took the entire existence of humanity to reach this point.
I'm not willing to hand-wave that away as some kind of technologically-obvious conclusion.
EUV required genuine new engineering for an example.
Are you for real?
'that difficult'
Look at projects like James Webb telescope.