The success is a giant leap toward the company's goal to take humans and cargo all the way to Mars on the world's biggest and most powerful launch vehicle
I think the average person gets it right. It’s a nice feat to catch the booster and it will save money. But that’s a side quest. The main quest of getting an actual load to orbit and beyond is still pretty far away. At least compared with the official time line where they wanted to achieve much more than that three years ago.
It’s not just saving a little money. If this works, it will drop costs by another order of magnitude. Falcon 9 already dropped a zero, Starship will likely drop it by another zero even without this, and consistently being able to do this catch would mean another zero. That’s getting to $20/kg to LEO, vs $150/kg without it on Starship.
That kind of cost will enable things that were completely infeasible before.
I didn’t say “a little” money. It may be important or critical for the business but from a technical perspective, demonstrating how it can safely being loads up and down decides whether the whole concept is actually feasible. That’s when people will start to get excited.
The rocket has been to orbit twice now, they’ve already demonstrated that. They’re working on the bonus mission, landing everything and perfecting the hardware to the point where it doesn’t need major refurbishment between flights.
As far as I understood it, SpaceX uses the word “orbit” liberally. If it reaches the hight where an orbit would be possible, that’s “being in orbit” for them. In an actual orbit, the rocket would not fall back down again in an hour or so without active breaking.
If my understanding is incorrect, I’m happy to be corrected.
And even of that was achieved soon, it’s still all without demonstrating that the starship could actually carry a load and return it safely. Not even an inexpensive dummy load. All SpaceX is showing in their live feeds are empty cargo holds that fill up with hot gases and fumes during reentry.
You’re not really wrong, but I think you are missing a few things. If you can get your rocket on a ballistic trajectory with a height above the Kármán line (~100km), then going into LEO from there is just a matter of having enough fuel. Nobody doubts that Starship could carry enough fuel to do that.
They haven’t bothered doing that in testing yet, because they wouldn’t learn anything. Knowing how the heat shield survives reentry is far more important. The upper stage still hasn’t been able to come down in a safe, controlled manner yet. Test 4 managed to splash down, but the heat shield took a lot more damage than anybody is comfortable with (if you watch the videos of it, you’ll see why it was amazing it survived at all). This one was Test 5, and while the heat shield survived better, the upper stage blew up when it hit the water.
It shouldn’t rupture a tank just because of a splashdown, no. Even if they’re able to chopstick catch the upper stage, or land it like Falcon 9’s boosters, a splashdown may be needed in emergencies.
As far as I understood it, SpaceX uses the word “orbit” liberally.
No, that’s not really right at all. With this last flight they brought the starship above 200km (100km is generally considered the point at which you’re in space), so they definitely went much higher than they needed. In low earth orbit, the velocity needed to hold that orbit is about 28000 KM/H, they kept their velocity below 27000 KM/H for safety/responsibility reasons. That way, if something failed and they couldn’t relight their engines, it would naturally come down anyway in a predictable manner. The closer you get to actual orbital speeds, the less predictable the re-entry and impact location will be, so 27000 KM/H is really as high as you want to go if you want to ensure predictable re-entry. It looks like they maxed out at 26750 kmh.
Also, after they reached 95% of orbital speeds, we know they still had lots of fuel in the tank because it had enough to slow down and land exactly where they wanted it to. And then… it still had enough to explode in a huge fireball, so clearly the rocket could have gone further. Or to look at it differently, all the propellant mass that got used up in that huge explosion at the end, that could have been payload mass. So clearly it has the capacity to put up a payload as well. I think the reason they haven’t yet is that mastering the reusability aspects are just a higher priority than the payload bays, I think we all trust they can design a payload bay when it comes time for that.
So what you’re saying is that SpaceX deliberatly doesn’t let Starship orbit, to keep reentry predictable. Which is what [email protected] said; they don’t actually orbit.
Also note that 100km is the minimum height to be “in space”, not the minimum height for achieving orbit.
Finally, I disagree with the note that having “enough fuel” to reach orbit means they have demonstrated such capability; I believe they easily could achieve this, but they haven’t actually demonstrated it yet.
I think the average person gets it right. It’s a nice feat to catch the booster and it will save money. But that’s a side quest. The main quest of getting an actual load to orbit and beyond is still pretty far away. At least compared with the official time line where they wanted to achieve much more than that three years ago.
It’s not just saving a little money. If this works, it will drop costs by another order of magnitude. Falcon 9 already dropped a zero, Starship will likely drop it by another zero even without this, and consistently being able to do this catch would mean another zero. That’s getting to $20/kg to LEO, vs $150/kg without it on Starship.
That kind of cost will enable things that were completely infeasible before.
I didn’t say “a little” money. It may be important or critical for the business but from a technical perspective, demonstrating how it can safely being loads up and down decides whether the whole concept is actually feasible. That’s when people will start to get excited.
Um, no?
The rocket has been to orbit twice now, they’ve already demonstrated that. They’re working on the bonus mission, landing everything and perfecting the hardware to the point where it doesn’t need major refurbishment between flights.
As far as I understood it, SpaceX uses the word “orbit” liberally. If it reaches the hight where an orbit would be possible, that’s “being in orbit” for them. In an actual orbit, the rocket would not fall back down again in an hour or so without active breaking. If my understanding is incorrect, I’m happy to be corrected. And even of that was achieved soon, it’s still all without demonstrating that the starship could actually carry a load and return it safely. Not even an inexpensive dummy load. All SpaceX is showing in their live feeds are empty cargo holds that fill up with hot gases and fumes during reentry.
You’re not really wrong, but I think you are missing a few things. If you can get your rocket on a ballistic trajectory with a height above the Kármán line (~100km), then going into LEO from there is just a matter of having enough fuel. Nobody doubts that Starship could carry enough fuel to do that.
They haven’t bothered doing that in testing yet, because they wouldn’t learn anything. Knowing how the heat shield survives reentry is far more important. The upper stage still hasn’t been able to come down in a safe, controlled manner yet. Test 4 managed to splash down, but the heat shield took a lot more damage than anybody is comfortable with (if you watch the videos of it, you’ll see why it was amazing it survived at all). This one was Test 5, and while the heat shield survived better, the upper stage blew up when it hit the water.
I thought it blew up because after tipping over the tanks ruptured - a normal result of a rocket tip-over. Am I mistaken?
It shouldn’t rupture a tank just because of a splashdown, no. Even if they’re able to chopstick catch the upper stage, or land it like Falcon 9’s boosters, a splashdown may be needed in emergencies.
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No, that’s not really right at all. With this last flight they brought the starship above 200km (100km is generally considered the point at which you’re in space), so they definitely went much higher than they needed. In low earth orbit, the velocity needed to hold that orbit is about 28000 KM/H, they kept their velocity below 27000 KM/H for safety/responsibility reasons. That way, if something failed and they couldn’t relight their engines, it would naturally come down anyway in a predictable manner. The closer you get to actual orbital speeds, the less predictable the re-entry and impact location will be, so 27000 KM/H is really as high as you want to go if you want to ensure predictable re-entry. It looks like they maxed out at 26750 kmh.
Also, after they reached 95% of orbital speeds, we know they still had lots of fuel in the tank because it had enough to slow down and land exactly where they wanted it to. And then… it still had enough to explode in a huge fireball, so clearly the rocket could have gone further. Or to look at it differently, all the propellant mass that got used up in that huge explosion at the end, that could have been payload mass. So clearly it has the capacity to put up a payload as well. I think the reason they haven’t yet is that mastering the reusability aspects are just a higher priority than the payload bays, I think we all trust they can design a payload bay when it comes time for that.
So what you’re saying is that SpaceX deliberatly doesn’t let Starship orbit, to keep reentry predictable. Which is what [email protected] said; they don’t actually orbit.
Also note that 100km is the minimum height to be “in space”, not the minimum height for achieving orbit.
Finally, I disagree with the note that having “enough fuel” to reach orbit means they have demonstrated such capability; I believe they easily could achieve this, but they haven’t actually demonstrated it yet.