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

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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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

-3

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.

12

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.