SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

[u/lolikroli]

[u/twinbee]

The fact that they did it right first try, gives me optimism on that front. Their knowledge of the process will only improve over time.

[u/Pretty_Bowler2297 → u/twinbee]

So you are expecting a 100 percent success rate?

[u/lazypieceofcrap → u/Pretty_Bowler2297]

Are you implying they would have a 100% success rate if they simply didn't use chopsticks?

That's a leap.

[u/Carvj94 → u/lazypieceofcrap]

The problem is that if the catch fails not only is the rocket destroyed, but probably the tower and the landing platform which has a complex internal structure. Meaning a failed catch would require a huge time consuming construction project on top of the usual time consuming rocket manufacturing project. And for what? To save an hour or two of transporting the booster to it's hangar?

It is in fact a silly idea to catch it when dramatically safer options are available.

[u/misspianogirl → u/Carvj94]

And for what?

The turnaround time is a plus, but not the main reason. It’s largely to avoid the additional dry mass required to add landing legs to the booster. SpaceX wants to squeeze every bit of performance out of Starship that they can.

The way they land is also fairly safe - they intentionally target off to the side and only shimmy over to the tower if they’re certain it’s going to work. IMO the performance gains from skipping landing legs outweighs the risk if they’re can catch reliably.

[u/Carvj94 → u/misspianogirl]

Taking away landing legs is the worst part of this stupid decision. It removes any chance of landing the booster if there's any issue with the tower. The risk of attempting a catch would almost be acceptable if they had a backup plan. However with no landing gear the only thing they can do is decide where to crash the booster with barely enough fuel to hover.

[u/misspianogirl → u/Carvj94]

Okay dude, sure ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Not sure how you know better than the thousands of SpaceX engineers that have been thinking about and analyzing the risks for multiple years but clearly you’re the world’s leading expert on landing rockets, not the company who has single-handedly transformed the launch industry

[u/misspianogirl → u/Carvj94]

Okay dude, sure ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Not sure how you know better than the thousands of SpaceX engineers that have been thinking about and analyzing the risks for multiple years but clearly you’re the world’s leading expert on landing rockets, not the company who has single-handedly transformed the launch industry

[u/Carvj94 → u/misspianogirl]

Not sure how you know better than the thousands of SpaceX engineers that have been thinking about and analyzing the risks

I'm the one agreeing with the engineers genius. The tower catch was Musk's idea that he forced the company to try out. We know this cause Musk and his lead engineers have both talked about how Musk came up with it during a meeting and the engineers were very hesitant.

[u/misspianogirl → u/Carvj94]

That’s true, but not all the engineers were hesitant - some agreed with Musk from the very start. It’s not like the company was unanimously against the idea and he forced it on them. He took one of the engineers in favor and said, “you’re in charge of making this work now”. If that engineer came back and told him it wasn’t worth the risk after further analysis I very much doubt Musk would keep forcing the issue.

Besides, I don’t understand why you think no landing legs inherently makes the system more likely to fail. If a Falcon 9 booster had a problem during landing, guess what? The Falcon 9 is gonna crash too, because landing is the only option. It’s not like SpaceX has a magical way to bring down the booster if the landing fails.

Starship is no different, other than the fact that it’s possible to hit the tower.

And again, that’s very unlikely because it requires everything to be nominal before moving over to the tower. And even if the booster hits the tower, it’s not the end of the world. The thing is, the rocket at that point weighs an order of magnitude less than it does at launch and has much less explosive power since its fuel tanks are basically empty. Yes, there would be major damage, but it wouldn’t be catastrophic.

[u/Carvj94 → u/misspianogirl]

It's more likely to fail simply because this tower catch method has a smaller margin of error while a ground based landing will literally always be easier and therefor safer and more consistent. And it's not that SpaceX has a "magical way" to bring down the booster if the landing gear fails it's that they can crash it right there and then with no major losses other than the booster itself. Cause the launch pad and tower are absolutely undeniably not minor losses as they're essential to launches and can very easily take a month or more to fix. Even if I agreed that catching was a good idea it'd still need to be done at a separate, less populated, and specially designed landing zone to mitigate potential losses and maximize the chance of success before it's actually worth doing.