Soldato
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The plan is for it to be caught on the launch tower, it doesn't have landing legs.
** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **
- Thread starter Cosimo
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My assumption is that due to this still being in early testing phase, there is a high risk of failure and coupled with how quickly the iterate, it isn't worth risking the drone ship to catch the booster.
Edit: Just seen the post above. I didn't realise they were trying to catch both halves.
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Soldato
They probably won't attempt a mechazilla catch until they build the 2nd tower far enough away from all the important bits like fuel tanks etc.
Soldato
Excellent launch today. Given their increased pace in launches, it will be interesting to see what's achieved by the end of the year - maybe we will get a 'chopstick' catch of the first stage.
Still not entirely convinced about the whole 'chopstick' setup. I get that it saves a huge amount of weight for the first stage and they can increase payload etc but, it's highly likely they destroy a few launch towers over the lifetime, burning money and causing launch delays whilst they're rebuilt.
Are they planning to catch Starship, as well as the first stage, for landings? I always thought Starship was meant to have legs, for landing on the moon/mars etc, and they would land it like that and use the 'chopsticks' on Starship purely for fitting it to the first stage (like they're currently doing).Edit: Just seen the post above. I didn't realise they were trying to catch both halves.
Still not entirely convinced about the whole 'chopstick' setup. I get that it saves a huge amount of weight for the first stage and they can increase payload etc but, it's highly likely they destroy a few launch towers over the lifetime, burning money and causing launch delays whilst they're rebuilt.
I could be misremembering but I thought I saw a concept video where Starship is caught by the tower and then it rotates it around and drops it ontop of a booster ready for its next launch.
Soldato
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@visibleman The majority of StarShip variants will be for ferrying mass to Low Earth Orbit. So like the Booster Heavy every kilo save is more mass into space., so no legs and tower capture. The Mars and Moon landing StarShips will need legs as you say but the majority won't, at least in the early years. The Moon Human Landing System variant will be very different, no flaps, no heat shields, but will have legs and alternative landing engines and solar panels.
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Associate
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Great in CGI, not in real life.
Imagine a slight error in the capture where it just takes out the Starship, tower, booster, and the entire launch complex.
Soldato
Must have completely missed this as i always thought they were equipping them with landing legs. Although for the moon variant, without flaps and heat shields, are they planning to not bring it back to Earth?
I can see there being a few 'oops' moments with captures. Although, thinking about it, i imagine if they run into any issues during capturing stages and if there is enough fuel, then they might be able to abort and dump the stage in the sea/another location for it to go boom.
Soldato
That is the dream but the idea they'll be able to relaunch these again without serious inspections is years and years away if ever.
Soldato
The Moon lander is a different design. It has landing legs and also landing and take off moon engines 2/3 of the way up the ship. Mars lander will also require legs but also flaps to bleed off velocity in the thin atmosphere of Mars. Might take more than 1 orbit to slow down though.
Associate
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The HLS (if they ever build it and don’t just get sued for not fulfilling their contract) would be just from the Lunar Gateway to the surface and back. Much easier to make specific designs rather than have one design for everything.
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Mars’ atmosphere is annoying - too thin to be really useful for slowing down without many MANY orbits, but not thin enough to just ignore completely. Luckily, no Starship will ever get to Mars, and probably never to the moon. Even NASA are starting to realise that doing 16 of those launches just to give it enough fuel to get there is absolutely absurd.
Soldato
Does make you wonder when they awarded SpaceX the contract for the Moon landing if the boffins there didn't seriously question how exactly it was going to get to the Moon without refuelling and how many would it take. Its not like the place is short of actual rocket scientists after all.
Soldato
I missed the re-entry, work got in the way. Just watched back over the entry/landing burn phase. Holy **** they did it! That was one of the most amazing things I've watched. Its mind blowing and reassuring that even with a hole melted in the flap they still manged to have enough control to successfully complete the terminal manoeuvres. What a monumental achievement. They would have got a huge amount of data from this flight as well from both stages. Today was a big success for SpaceX.
Associate
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I can answer that one.
The NASA employee who selected SpaceX as the sole winner of the contract in 2021 was Kathy Lueders.
She left NASA not long afterwards, and I’ll give you one guess who she took up employment with.
Iteration. See if you can get it to land safely before you drop it on and sink an expensive drone ship. There'll be plenty more flights to recover it.
Soldato
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Alternative answer to the corruption implyijng one is that prior to the contract Congress only approved enough funding NASA cover the SpaceX tender ($2.94Bn) and not enough to cover the Blue Origin tender ($5.99Bn).
But whilst HLS StarShip is very ambitious it is being built by the Worlds current most capable launch provider. Who have a proven track record of innovation, if not adherence to timetables. 90% of mass to orbit this year will be on SpaceX rockets, that's World not US btw.
Soldato
Really cant wait for more detailed information and hopefully more footage to emerge from IFT4.
Associate
Epic stuff, timed to my lunch hour so that was good. Was watching Tim's feed 
have since seen the NASA Space Flight reaction which is also great, just complete disbelief lol
have since seen the NASA Space Flight reaction which is also great, just complete disbelief lol
Soldato
That might all be true but it doesn't explain how NASA could think signing a contract for a rocket that requires between 12-16 other rockets to just refuel is was a good idea. "Elon Time" isn't the issue here, physics is. If NASA signed a contract knowing the company couldn't deliver what was promised then Congress should be calling them in to explain themselves.
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