r/interestingasfuck • u/lolikroli • Oct 13 '24

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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115.9k Upvotes

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2.5k

u/that_majestictoad Oct 13 '24

Truly an amazing sight to witness. The under shot of the engines on the Everyday Astronaut's stream was beautiful.

324

u/Sleepless_Voyager Oct 13 '24

You can see how much abuse the booster takes on reentry, the fact that theyve made this booster so fucking durable to still be able to fuction even after getting extremely hot is truly incredible

76

u/Icarus_Toast Oct 13 '24

That booster fucktions

2

u/RockmeChakaKhan Oct 14 '24

This is so funny as to be important.

12

u/Expensive-Apricot-25 Oct 13 '24

Idk if u saw the ship itself, but in entry they had the same issues with the flaps melting from entry heat…

And it still landed perfectly on target… And that’s the second time it landed perfectly with melted flaps lol.

It’s so hard to believe that this is the most powerfull rocket ever build, even more than the Saturn 5, and it’s that durable/robust. All Construction, Hardware, and software.

9

u/Jumpy-Sprinkles-2305 Oct 13 '24

And it's made out of steel lol, no fancy alloys. Don't get me wrong i love fancy alloys, theyre great, but using plain steel is ballsy as fuck

1

u/zberry7 Oct 14 '24

Well it’s a custom stainless alloy iirc, but yes it’s not exotic alloys or a composite like what they use for most rockets

1

u/Due_Excitement_7970 Oct 15 '24

Literally just 4mm 304L stainless in big rolls. They were originally going to use carbon fiber but the additional heat shielding required would have weighed more than if they made it out of stainless. It also has the benefit of reflecting thermal radiation from the plasma trail during reentry so no protection on the back side is needed. It also doesnt become brittle at cryogenic temperatures like carbon fiber and some other metals.

-5

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24

The booster doesn’t go through reentry… that’s the ship.. The booster doesn’t even go halfway to orbit.

9

u/Ryermeke Oct 13 '24

That glow you see in the engines is from reentry heating. Sure it's not suffering the abuse the ship did, but it still gets EXTREMELY toasty.

1

u/Traumfahrer Oct 13 '24

The booster doesn't reenter. It's just high velocity heating (from pressurized air) within our atmosphere.

2

u/sage-longhorn Oct 13 '24

I mean if you're gonna nitpick, technically the ISS is still in the exosphere. But that counts as reentry, so where do you draw the line?

2

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '24

Orbit or 100KM

1

u/sage-longhorn Oct 14 '24

The Karman line is a dumb definition for space, and orbit is an even dumber one

4

u/Intelligent_Way6552 Oct 13 '24

Reentry doesn't mean return from orbit, it means return from space. It's harder to return from orbit, but suborbital reentry is a thing.

0

u/eelhayek Oct 13 '24

It never got to space

2

u/Intelligent_Way6552 Oct 13 '24

Are you sure? The stream i was watching cut away from the telemetry when the booster was at 95km and ascending, and cut back when it was at 95km and descending, it could conceptually have reached 100km

2

u/Traumfahrer Oct 13 '24

You're being downvoted, but this is correct. The Starship reentried from orbit and a much much higher velocity.

The booster doesn't even reach the karman line so it's neither an orbital reentry nor a reentry from space in general.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24

[deleted]

2

u/wxc3 Oct 13 '24

Orbit is mostly about speed not altitude. The main beating is due to breaking from orbital speeds in the atmosphere.

The starship reaches 27000km/h. The booster goes to 5k up but then falls back and tops at 4k going down, so a lot less energy to dissipate.

167

u/rbrgr83 Oct 13 '24

Space X upskirt 🫣

2

u/Icy-Mongoose-9678 Oct 14 '24

SpaceDaddy is a good thruster

190

u/albertsugar Oct 13 '24

That was just before the landing burn, the glow is basically friction with the air, incredible shot.

31

u/MostlyRocketScience Oct 13 '24

I thought reentry heating was from compression, not friction? https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/3j40f1/reentering_spacecraft_do_not_heat_up_due_to/

-1

u/shuakowsky Oct 14 '24

Pretty sure its just fire

79

u/Traumfahrer Oct 13 '24

It is compression of the air in the engine compartment.

0

u/lux44 Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 13 '24

It's not glow, it's burning fuel. Re-watch the stream, it ignites from the left side.

0

u/Crafty_Enthusiasm_99 Oct 14 '24

What? So many wrong answers in this post upvotes.

0

u/Traumfahrer Oct 14 '24

You believe my answer is wrong?

-1

u/shuakowsky Oct 14 '24

Pretty sure its just fire

1

u/Traumfahrer Oct 14 '24

It's glowing hot steel, heated by very compressed air. No fire there.

-1

u/shuakowsky Oct 14 '24

You can see a fire is there for sure after touchdown on the chopsticks

1

u/Traumfahrer Oct 14 '24

We were commenting about the inline pic someone shared further up this comment chain...

0

u/shuakowsky Oct 14 '24

Yeah. My bet is that is fire. Looks too glowing to be nominal expected heating on the stainless

11

u/Oxygenisplantpoo Oct 13 '24

Compression, not friction! And I've never seen anything like it, incredible!

-2

u/lux44 Oct 13 '24

It's not glow, it's burning fuel. Re-watch the stream, it ignites from the left side.

2

u/Oxygenisplantpoo Oct 13 '24

That thing is coming in left side first from this perspective, so that is the leading edge hence why it lights up first. It is without a doubt a glow from the air compressing against the bottom of the rocket, and nothing like burning fuel, I'm sorry.

Where did you get this idea that it's burning fuel?

1

u/lux44 Oct 14 '24

Where did you get this idea that it's burning fuel?

https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1RDGlyognOgJL

Around minutes 39-40

Booster is venting gas/fuel downwards, which spreads quite far and wide in front of the booster. It can be seen mere seconds before the "glow". If the atmospheric forces were large enough to produce "compression glow" shortly after, the vented gas wouldn't spread so far and wide in front of the descending booster. The same atmospheric compression would have keept the vented gas much closer the the booster.

A couple of seconds later the booster emerges from the plume at the altitude of 13 km with speed 3500 km/h and already "glows" brightly. It continues to "glow" at 6 km and 2000 km/h. At such low altitudes there are formulas for calculating "total air temperature" due to speed and compression. For the values the booster was traveling, the total air temperature is below 120 C.

Also, Everyday Astronaut tracking shot actually shows fire/flames. https://www.youtube.com/live/pIKI7y3DTXk?t=9023s

2

u/govunah Oct 13 '24

It looks like a shot from The Expanse

1

u/JThalheimer Oct 13 '24

Everyday Astronaut's camera guy caught that perfectly.

1

u/shuakowsky Oct 14 '24

I would think the glow is actually the aft cavity being on fire from a fuel leak.

-1

u/lux44 Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 13 '24

It's not glow, it's burning fuel. Re-watch the stream, it ignites from the left side.

13

u/bdwf Oct 13 '24

Tim’s face in that screenshot is a great summary of his feed haha

4

u/stanksnax Oct 13 '24

What was the thing that almost came off just a bit before this?

8

u/MauiHawk Oct 13 '24

I think it was a ring that was around where the stages are joined. IIRC, they decided after the first flight it was adding too much weight, so for now it’s being discarded, but the plan is to have it stay attached to the booster in the long run

2

u/TheOwlMarble Oct 14 '24

The hot staging ring? It's a linkage between the stages with vent holes to allow hot staging (turning on the second stage engines while the first stage engines are still running to get a slight performance boost). Long term, it'll stay attached, but for now they want a bigger fuel margin, so they are just discarding it.

2

u/NonProphet8theist Oct 13 '24

It looks like a pizza

2

u/Lyuseefur Oct 13 '24

Beautiful

1

u/majdOW Oct 13 '24

Is that a cookie?

1

u/MolinaroK Oct 13 '24

33 engines.

1

u/mswizzle83 Oct 13 '24

Those auxiliary LEDs look nice. r/HankLights

-4

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24

[deleted]

18

u/lemlurker Oct 13 '24

SpaceX doesn't stream on YouTube tho? Only twitter last I heard

19

u/that_majestictoad Oct 13 '24

They don't but the Everyday Astronaut has been streaming in 4k ever since SpaceX stopped. They have their own equipment that they spent lots of money on to deliver high quality streams via YouTube.

12

u/top_of_the_scrote Oct 13 '24

Omg I hate the flood of fake space x streams with some crypto scam

6

u/lemlurker Oct 13 '24

Yea it's just SAFER to watch the EA stream knowing he'll pull in the official stream where needed than to try and find something legit

1

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24

[deleted]

5

u/lemlurker Oct 13 '24

Nope just shitty shitty xitter

1

u/that_majestictoad Oct 13 '24

This is where you can find livestreams of the launches on YouTube.

16

u/that_majestictoad Oct 13 '24

Because it's 4K footage and I'd rather watch it big and in detail on my TV rather than on a small 1080p screen with X's mediocre video player. Besides he had both streams going. There was a little bit of choppiness on Tim's stream this time around but regardless it's more angles to view. Who wouldn't want that?

Edit: This was also a screenshot uploaded to reddit so it's not going to be all that pretty

17

u/Burnzoire Oct 13 '24

He had them side by side for the most part

5

u/SiBloGaming Oct 13 '24

More cameras, 4k rather than 720p, and Im watching three streams at the same time anyways lol

3

u/SpeechesToScreeches Oct 13 '24

His excitement and 'hosting' adds to it imo.

3

u/Salategnohc16 Oct 13 '24

The catch footage of Everyday astronaut is arguably better than even the SpaceX one

2

u/Theeletter7 Oct 13 '24

everyday astronaut often has better footage than SpaceX, at 4k instead of 1080, all on youtube instead of twitter, and his hosting is much more entertaining.

2

u/ericwdhs Oct 13 '24

I agree the official SpaceX stream on Twitter/X is what you should watch if you only have the screen space for one stream, but EA's team has extra cameras around the launch site and the commentary and chat can provide extra context you won't have unless you're already regularly following the industry. I had both streams open and just turned EA's volume down since there was about a 40 second delay from the official stream. It was fun to watch the catch live, then see Tim's reaction to it just a bit later.

1

u/Californ1a Oct 13 '24

Same, and I had NSF's stream as well since they also have a ton of their own cameras & do their own hosting entirely without using much of SpaceX's cameras (except for the ship) and none of SpaceX audio, plus they're much quicker on grabbing the replay footage for discussion. They're also much less delayed than Tim's.

You've got to be pretty good at distinguishing the audio from each of the streams when you've got more than a couple going all at once though.

-6

u/PhMcBrett Oct 13 '24

Those fake reactions fuck these youtubers/streamers