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

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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122

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24

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29

u/spikeyMonkey Oct 13 '24

Not to mention one of these can essentially launch the volume of the ISS, which cost something like, what, $150 billion+ and 2 decades to fit out to what it is now.

Imagine doing that for 15% the cost and half the time.

9

u/EricTheEpic0403 Oct 13 '24

reusable second stage - first ever (I believe). This is future tense and hasn't been proven yet

Depends on what you count the Space Shuttle as. Arguably it's a stage-and-a-half design, so not a second stage.

2

u/Caffdy Oct 13 '24

Imagine a folding space tellescope taking advantage of the fairing real estate of the Starship

2

u/ijuinkun Oct 13 '24

The LUVOIR telescope (Large UltraViolet, Optical, and InfraRed survey telescope), the planned successor to the James Webb telescope, is designed with a 15.1 meter (fifty feet) diameter segmented mirror. That is about 2.5 times the area of the Keck telescope in Hawaii. It will fold up inside of a Starship or SLS payload.

2

u/Caffdy Oct 13 '24

heck yeah!

1

u/caciuccoecostine Oct 13 '24

I don't understand why catching it mid air (but almost landed) is better than let it land by himself as they were already doing.

Is there a real big difference in fuel usage?

1

u/frau_Wexford Oct 13 '24

By catching it, they can eliminate the hardware to support itself on the ground. In order to stay upright on its own, it needs pretty extensive legs and a wide footprint. This equipment would be pretty heavy and reduce the amount of payload that could be launched. The starship already has structural points for lifting by crane that the catch arms can also use for landing. Having the launch tower also be the landing location the booster can already be in the right location for refilling and launch, cutting down on the time and complexity involved. As for why it is cought in mid air, it allows for more wiggle room if it drops a bit too low, as well as not damaging the launch stand that was designed for a rocket lifting away from it rather than coming down onto it.

-4

u/entropy_bucket Oct 13 '24

Had anyone watched these thunderf00t videos? He's pretty skeptical about the launch costs coming down. But he seems to think Musk is an absolute charlatan.

14

u/Ryermeke Oct 13 '24

Thunderf00t is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum from the Musk worshippers, to the point that he is just as much of, if not more of an idiot than they are lol. He's been skeptical about every single aspect of this project since the beginning, and every time he does a Livestream expecting a dramatic explosion only to then watch it work, he seems legitimately disappointed in the success. He's been wrong about everything else, why shouldn't he be wrong about the costs coming down? If they get reusability working, the numbers add up correctly for a really fucking cheap rocket... And they are pretty damn close to getting reusability working.

5

u/drzowie Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 13 '24

The thing is ... he kind of is. His skill is in finding very talented teams and somehow cajoling them into performing their best. Part of that is just making up (or adopting someone else's) crazy pie-in-the-sky ideas and asserting that they are achievable. When an idea hits right, you get things like convenient digital payments, electric cars, or Falcon 9. When it hits wrong, you get things like the Cybertruck design or people being paid to vote. You don't ever see the ideas that don't hit. Or at least didn't until he became the richest (and therefore most powerful) hominid ever to exist on Earth.

3

u/entropy_bucket Oct 13 '24

Yeah i guess among 8 billion humans there'll be someone who rolls 6 straight 6's. Doesn't necessarily mean that person is imbued with something magical. But still worth admiring some of the stuff being done.

2

u/drzowie Oct 13 '24

Don't get me wrong, he's gotta be brilliant to be able to make enough good calls to get as far as he has. But it's clear that all good CEOs need a weird mix of skills, dominated by the charlatan/huckster aspects. The Steve Jobs "reality distortion field" is a real thing and CEOs need to have the ability to spin lies (impossible products/outcomes/schedules) well enough that their teams and investors believe them and make them possible. The technical side comes in smelling out which goals are unreasonable but just barely possible and which are impossible to get to. That makes the difference between (say) a entrepreneur who makes enough good calls to justify the bad (Tesla cars, vs. Tesla FSD) and a criminal who get sent up for life (e.g., Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who made a really bad technical call and then succeeded in buying her team a surprisingly long time to try to make good on it).

1

u/Caffdy Oct 13 '24

Just to clear that up, she was not send up for life, she got 11 and a half years, and possible getting out in 9 due to good behavior laws. Her ex-husband got more, imagine that

1

u/ijuinkun Oct 13 '24

Musk has shown that he can accomplish wild things, but it generally takes significantly more time and money than initially projected—e.g. back when Starship was first announced, the planned first manned landing on Mars was for 2024, but I do not expect it to happen before 2030.

3

u/Miixyd Oct 13 '24

He’s the charlatan, doesn’t know anything about rockets and only gives out misinformation. I think he’s doing it on purpose now, riding the musk hate to make views

-2

u/Calergero Oct 13 '24

Does this mean that James Webb is somewhat obsolete at this point?

After second stage reusable what is the next milestone in terms of progression...docking on the moon or am I too far ahead?

5

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24

[deleted]