APOD: Caught (2024 Oct 23)

[APOD Robot]

Caught

Explanation: What if a rocket could return to its launch tower -- and be caught? This happened for the first time 10 days ago, after a SpaceX Starship rocket blasted off from its pad in Boca Chica, Texas, USA. Starship then split, as planned, with its upper stage landing in the Pacific Ocean. The big difference was the lower stage, Super Heavy Booster 12, was caught by its launch tower about 7 minutes later. Catching a rocket for reuse is a new and innovative way to help reduce the cost of rocket flight by making rockets more easily reusable. Starship rockets may be used by NASA in the future to send spacecraft to Earth orbit, the Moon, and even other planets.

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[RocketRon]

As of this minute, there is no main image displayed of this amazing technical feat...
Hopethishelp.

[gmPhil]

As of this minute, there is no main image displayed of this amazing technical feat...
Hopethishelp.

I think you're supposed to click the X (Twitter) link. (Not something I'm terribly fond of doing, myself. I could have hoped they found the same or similar video elsewhere.)

[glenn.johnson]

The Starship upper stage splashed down in the Indian Ocean, not Pacific; West of Australia.

[johnnydeep]

As of this minute, there is no main image displayed of this amazing technical feat...
Hopethishelp.

I think you're supposed to click the X (Twitter) link. (Not something I'm terribly fond of doing, myself. I could have hoped they found the same or similar video elsewhere.)

The image (of an X/Twitter embedded video) shows fine for me on Windows, and it plays if I click the play button. But I can also click on the "watch on X" button.

[johnnydeep]

Ok, this is indeed a very impressive engineering feat! But why are they "catching" the booster instead of having it land under its own power like the Falcon boosters? Is the Starship booster too heavy to be supported by landing legs?

[gmPhil]

As of this minute, there is no main image displayed of this amazing technical feat...
Hopethishelp.

I think you're supposed to click the X (Twitter) link. (Not something I'm terribly fond of doing, myself. I could have hoped they found the same or similar video elsewhere.)

The image (of an X/Twitter embedded video) shows fine for me on Windows, and it plays if I click the play button. But I can also click on the "watch on X" button.

It seems to depend on the browser, and likely the settings within each. It shows for me in some, but not others. (I have quite a few!)

[Dioskur]

And, pray tell, where is the picture?

If you think that posting a link to the X-hole is good enough, think again.
Please don't do that kind of things ever again.

[76AD]

An amazing feat indeed but what's equally amazing is some people on here getting triggered over the platform that it was streamed on.
Clicking on a X/twitter link won't turn you into an 'extremist religious rightwing Trump supporter'
I would assume that these posters were ok with twitter when it banned a sitting president and supressed relevant news stories while promoting made up propaganda = Russia, Russia, Russia...
And my apologies for bringing politics into this science forum but the constant character assissination from the media over the last eight years has really done a job on a lot of peoples minds.

[Chris Peterson]

An amazing feat indeed but what's equally amazing is some people on here getting triggered over the platform that it was streamed on.
Clicking on a X/twitter link won't turn you into an 'extremist religious rightwing Trump supporter'
I would assume that these posters were ok with twitter when it banned a sitting president and supressed relevant news stories while promoting made up propaganda = Russia, Russia, Russia...
And my apologies for bringing politics into this science forum but the constant character assissination from the media over the last eight years has really done a job on a lot of peoples minds.

The problem is that APOD material should never be hosted on external sites. Not on X. Not on YouTube. These are not stable, and if you look back at the archives, a large amount of video material is no longer available because of this.

[HellCat]

Ok, this is indeed a very impressive engineering feat! But why are they "catching" the booster instead of having it land under its own power like the Falcon boosters? Is the Starship booster too heavy to be supported by landing legs?

If I remember correctly, the reason is that it removes a significant source of potential failures: the legs themselves.

[Cousin Ricky]

As of this minute, there is no main image displayed of this amazing technical feat...
Hopethishelp.

I think you're supposed to click the X (Twitter) link. (Not something I'm terribly fond of doing, myself. I could have hoped they found the same or similar video elsewhere.)

It’s all good. I’ve already seen the video on other media.

[johnnydeep]

Ok, this is indeed a very impressive engineering feat! But why are they "catching" the booster instead of having it land under its own power like the Falcon boosters? Is the Starship booster too heavy to be supported by landing legs?

If I remember correctly, the reason is that it removes a significant source of potential failures: the legs themselves.

Sure, the legs could fail, but it seems to me that the action of "catching" is much more likely to fail (missing the tower, colliding with the tower, not slowing down enough, etc). But I'm not an engineer, and most particularly, I'm not an aerospace engineer!

[Chris Peterson]

Ok, this is indeed a very impressive engineering feat! But why are they "catching" the booster instead of having it land under its own power like the Falcon boosters? Is the Starship booster too heavy to be supported by landing legs?

If I remember correctly, the reason is that it removes a significant source of potential failures: the legs themselves.

Sure, the legs could fail, but it seems to me that the action of "catching" is much more likely to fail (missing the tower, colliding with the tower, not slowing down enough, etc). But I'm not an engineer, and most particularly, I'm not an aerospace engineer!

We're very good with control systems these days. And it isn't just about legs failing... they're dead weight. Get rid of legs, you increase your payload.

[raschumacher]

The problem is that APOD material should never be hosted on external sites. Not on X. Not on YouTube. These are not stable, and if you look back at the archives, a large amount of video material is no longer available because of this.

Hear, hear!

[Jim Armstrong]

Elon Musk, with his huge carbon footprint and massive amount of junk in orbit, is a friend of neither the earth nor astronomy.
Among other things.

[Chris Peterson]

Elon Musk, with his huge carbon footprint and massive amount of junk in orbit, is a friend of neither the earth nor astronomy.
Among other things.

It's not junk. It's the Internet... and because of the nature of our policies, it's the only Internet I can get. So I love Starlink. And it interferes not in the least with my imaging, nor indeed with the vast majority of professional astronomy. Its social value is immense. Musk may be insane, but the output of his engineers and scientists is pure genius.

[johnnydeep]

Elon Musk, with his huge carbon footprint and massive amount of junk in orbit, is a friend of neither the earth nor astronomy.
Among other things.

It's not junk. It's the Internet... and because of the nature of our policies, it's the only Internet I can get. So I love Starlink. And it interferes not in the least with my imaging, nor indeed with the vast majority of professional astronomy. Its social value is immense. Musk may be insane, but the output of his engineers and scientists is pure genius.

So, Starlink is the only (or perhaps the most reliable) way for you to get internet access?

[johnnydeep]

If I remember correctly, the reason is that it removes a significant source of potential failures: the legs themselves.

Sure, the legs could fail, but it seems to me that the action of "catching" is much more likely to fail (missing the tower, colliding with the tower, not slowing down enough, etc). But I'm not an engineer, and most particularly, I'm not an aerospace engineer!

We're very good with control systems these days. And it isn't just about legs failing... they're dead weight. Get rid of legs, you increase your payload.

So, is catching all their boosters the ultimate goal? I don't recall SpaceX even attempting it with any of the Falcon boosters.

[Chris Peterson]

Sure, the legs could fail, but it seems to me that the action of "catching" is much more likely to fail (missing the tower, colliding with the tower, not slowing down enough, etc). But I'm not an engineer, and most particularly, I'm not an aerospace engineer!

We're very good with control systems these days. And it isn't just about legs failing... they're dead weight. Get rid of legs, you increase your payload.

So, is catching all their boosters the ultimate goal? I don't recall SpaceX even attempting it with any of the Falcon boosters.

Who knows? The advantage of legs is you can land almost anywhere, with minimal infrastructure. The advantage of a fancy landing platform is that you can dispense with a lot of weight and complexity in the lander. Maybe there's a place for both?

[florid_snow]

The argument is that landing on the launch mount is better for rapid re-use, as opposed to just normal slow re-use. If landing in the chopsticks is approximately the same order of magnitude difficulty as landing with legs, then you gain both the mass advantage from not carrying the legs, but also on the time until next launch, because it's already on the launch mount. Maybe that factor alone would be break-even vs. landing on legs and just having a big crane very near to the refueling site, but combining both does (theoretically) give a net advantage for rapid re-use. It's really mostly the mass I'd bet, the rocket equation is so cruel to initial mass.

Edit: More on the LEO refueling plan: For the Artemis missions, the idea is to launch the landing ship into LEO, and then it gets refueled by 5-7 other starships. This process will take more time for orbit matching, docking, fuel transfer, and undocking, compared to launch, so it will make sense to have more than one starship in a transfer orbit to deliver fuel, especially to minimize boil-off. This leads to having maybe 5 times more starships than boosters, so the turn-around time for the booster on Earth becomes important for re-fueling time for the LEO ship.

And personally, I'm one of those people who strongly disagrees with Elon's politics, but I also recognize the huge benefits SpaceX is bringing to astronomy and science. If you are bothered by how narcissists rise to the top on all 6 sides of every issue, and you want to influence these types of people, no matter what side, you are never going to do it with criticism, the trick is no matter what you say they will just find a way to be right, so use that. Give them praise in an area adjacent, and leading to a change in perspective, and they will do mental flips to pretend to be all along a slightly different person who deserves that praise and more. If you get groups of people to give this type of psycho-social praise to certain individuals, you can more easily affect public policy.