Sea Speed said:

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Not gonna lie, watching those videos got emotional. I've never seen anything like it. It's absolutely a modern marvel and the most amazing thing I have seen in my lifetime they caught a freaking rocket that fell out of space. CAUGHT IT.

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Same. The Falcon 9 stuff has become so commonplace that it no longer elicits the same level of emotion. The other time I vividly remember becoming emotional was the first dual landing with Falcon Heavy. It's part magic, part poetry, and part science and full on awe-some in the literal sense of the word.

hph6203 said:

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Yes, it is.

Put it this way, ask literally anyone who they'd want to see react to that landing, and the invariable answer would be Elon. You follow up and ask "are you sure you wouldn't want to see mine?" And your wife and mom might saw oh sweetie of course! Everyone else would say why would I care about yours more than the man that made it happen.

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If Musk was commenting on aspects of the launch that others are not, then that would be interesting. Otherwise, if you are interested in merely his reaction, then a video of him reacting would be better (like with Falcon Heavy). Him saying "No F-ing way" is meh.

hph6203 said:

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An opinion you can easily keep to yourself.

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I shouldn't have to keep that to my self just because you don't like it. This is America. Grow up.

So I heard that SpaceX was going to reduce to 3 grid fins. But today they captured by the grid fins. 3 would have not worked for that. Does that mean they are staying with 4 fins forever? Or are they going to catch by those 2 little pegs in the future. Was this just an intermediate step to that?

It actually landed on the two pegs from what I saw.

My technical deep dive on "How SpaceX Will Catch Super Heavy" is in the final stages of completion! It's currently sitting at 31 minutes long and I plan to release it days before #Starship Flight 5. This has been months in the making so I hope you find it informative. Head over… pic.twitter.com/nmMQR0iHZG

— Ryan Hansen Space (@RyanHansenSpace) October 9, 2024

It's tough to see, but I am not real sure those huge grids are actually engineered to be able to bear the mass of the vehicle.

You can see the 4K replay here on YouTube in the meantime! - https://t.co/feYchvuu2x

— Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) October 13, 2024

aTmAg said:

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So I heard that SpaceX was going to reduce to 3 grid fins. But today they captured by the grid fins. 3 would have not worked for that. Does that mean they are staying with 4 fins forever? Or are they going to catch by those 2 little pegs in the future. Was this just an intermediate step to that?

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They caught the booster on the landing pins today. The grid fins aren't designed for a landing catch.

Ag87H2O said:

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aTmAg said:

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So I heard that SpaceX was going to reduce to 3 grid fins. But today they captured by the grid fins. 3 would have not worked for that. Does that mean they are staying with 4 fins forever? Or are they going to catch by those 2 little pegs in the future. Was this just an intermediate step to that?

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They caught the booster on the landing pins today. The grid fins aren't designed for a landing catch.

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They can already do orbital insertion and deorbit. They're not orbiting on purpose for these tests, but there's nothing stopping them.

Next time might be more testing of the pez dispenser and orbital refueling. I wouldn't be surprised if they landed on a drone ship, but I'm also not sure if they have one capable of that. Depends on the characteristics of the drone ships they have and whether starship will raise their center of gravity too high.

Doing rough calculations in 3D yields residual masses of 365 tons of LOX and 232 tons of LCH4. So ~600 tons of propellant residuals at landing. That is significantly more than I expected. https://t.co/S946at5GRo

— Ryan Hansen Space (@RyanHansenSpace) October 13, 2024

I would have to theorize that they did that so that there would be minimum risk as to sloshing messing up the restart on either/both the boost back burn and landing one. Might have also helped with autogenous/pressure not just in the lines/turbopumps but the rocket itself to be strong enough for initial test here on landing (as in, properly/fully pressurized it's actually stronger).

That sloshing is probably what caused the loss of the first booster from what I read, though I think all the baffles etc. have since been completely redesigned.

Elon is an amazing dude… can't believe they nailed this on the first try. Incredible job!

Sea Speed said:

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Not gonna lie, watching those videos got emotional. I've never seen anything like it. It's absolutely a modern marvel and the most amazing thing I have seen in my lifetime they caught a freaking rocket that fell out of space. CAUGHT IT.

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I am the same. Such a huge mix of emotions. It is very rare that you actually know ahead of time that you are witnessing pivotal moments in the history of mankind, and SpaceX has provided a bunch of them in the last decade. My dad worked for NASA when I was a kid and I am so sad that he can't be here to witness what we are seeing. He stoked an interest in science fiction for both my brother and I and would have loved to see it play out live.

fullback44 said:

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Elon is an amazing dude… can't believe they nailed this on the first try. Incredible job!

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Yep. So glad this dude is on our side.

RED AG 98 said:

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Sea Speed said:

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Not gonna lie, watching those videos got emotional. I've never seen anything like it. It's absolutely a modern marvel and the most amazing thing I have seen in my lifetime they caught a freaking rocket that fell out of space. CAUGHT IT.

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Same. The Falcon 9 stuff has become so commonplace that it no longer elicits the same level of emotion. The other time I vividly remember becoming emotional was the first dual landing with Falcon Heavy. It's part magic, part poetry, and part science and full on awe-some in the literal sense of the word.

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Best one sentence summary of it I have seen. Encapsulates it all perfectly.

Surely Musk will get a Nobel Prize for Science in the near future, wouldn't you think? I'm trying to think of the last time a single individual had these levels of success in pushing technology and exploration forward at this rate?

Surely

Nice crowd shot;

I keep re-watching this and can't believe my eyes... This is f*cking insane!

Congratulations @SpaceX, @elonmusk 🚀 pic.twitter.com/OKnO9tYmMf

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) October 13, 2024

ABATTBQ11 said:

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They can already do orbital insertion and deorbit. They're not orbiting on purpose for these tests, but there's nothing stopping them.

Next time might be more testing of the pez dispenser and orbital refueling. I wouldn't be surprised if they landed on a drone ship, but I'm also not sure if they have one capable of that. Depends on the characteristics of the drone ships they have and whether starship will raise their center of gravity too high.

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Have they proven deorbit with Raptor? They've got to be able to relight those to get that ship down. I thought there were some questions regarding that when they tested.

They certainly know they can control it in orbit and through reentry. Not sure if they're ready to cross populated Mexico just yet for a GoM landing or even an RTLS. Think maybe a drone ship landing off Baja? They need landing legs too

View from my house in Harlingen this morning. Got the big rumble for 15 seconds or so a minute or two after liftoff.

[url=https://ibb.co/YhgFcVw][/url]

[url=https://ibb.co/dtx2JdC][/url]

Ag97 said:

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Surely Musk will get a Nobel Prize for Science in the near future, wouldn't you think? I'm trying to think of the last time a single individual had these levels of success in pushing technology and exploration forward at this rate?

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There is no Nobel Prize for Science. It's Physics, Chemistry and Medicine.

Watching all these videos it's easy to miss the literal enormity of this in flight capture. That booster is over 230 ft tall.

Absolutely amazing.

That one got me.

Humanity is on the precipice of being a truly space faring people.

Launching and returning the world's most powerful rocket pic.twitter.com/E8AWRc5TTZ

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 13, 2024

Kenneth_2003 said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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They can already do orbital insertion and deorbit. They're not orbiting on purpose for these tests, but there's nothing stopping them.

Next time might be more testing of the pez dispenser and orbital refueling. I wouldn't be surprised if they landed on a drone ship, but I'm also not sure if they have one capable of that. Depends on the characteristics of the drone ships they have and whether starship will raise their center of gravity too high.

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Have they proven deorbit with Raptor? They've got to be able to relight those to get that ship down. I thought there were some questions regarding that when they tested.

They certainly know they can control it in orbit and through reentry. Not sure if they're ready to cross populated Mexico just yet for a GoM landing or even an RTLS. Think maybe a drone ship landing off Baja? They need landing legs too

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I believe they're already at orbital velocity, just not orbital trajectory. If they're orbital, I'm pretty sure they can use thrusters to direct them to a deorbit trajectory and use the fins to slow them down and control reentry like they're already doing and then relight for a landing burn.

They do still want a vacuum relight of the raptors, but I'm pretty sure they can do it.

No thrusters on Starship. Pretty sure their going to have to flip butt first and light the raptors.

tk for tu juan said:

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Interesting. That clearly shows that chine on the right side in the picture had disintegrated prior to the touch down on the mechazilla arms, or any tower contact, I think. I was wondering about that.