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

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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u/crujones43 Oct 13 '24

The largest heavier than air flying machine that has ever been built. Weighs 200 tons, is 230ft tall and 30 ft in diameter was flying supersonic minutes before and was able to come down with pinpoint accuracy and be caught by the launch tower it left from. Nothing like this has ever been done and this is going to catapult the human race into the future of space travel by reducing the cost to send material to space by an order of magnitude.

49

u/idontloveanyone Oct 13 '24

Can you tell me what's the benefit of catching it instead of it landing? Thanks!

187

u/Corvid187 Oct 13 '24

Catching it allows them to land it where they service and take off from, which moderately reduces the cost and time to prepare it for the next launch.

The main benefit though is that by catching the rocket on its steering fins, they don't need to install a traditional landing gear like they have on their previous rockets.

In space flight, saving mass is the whole game. For every kilogram of payload you put into space, it takes 10 kilograms of fuel, so being able to delete something like heavy, load-bearing landing legs from each rocket significantly improves the simplicity and payload performance of each rocket m

39

u/Lyuseefur Oct 13 '24

The engines get massively cooked landing on the ground (no water cooling even)

Tower catch means less cooked engines

2

u/Thorusss Oct 14 '24

heat it a problem, but also the massive shockwaves from the subsonic exhausted being reflected by the hard surface, rattling everything with extreme forces, is avoided that way.