Apollo 13 in real-time & other Space stuff

At no point did that look like it was going to work.

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Yeah the angle was so steep at first I thought we were in for a big boom and then just suddenly gigantic rocket casually sitting on chopsticks. Should be fun to see just how close to the tower they got, this might explain why we heard about the .5 cm accuracy of the IFT 4 booster landing earlier this week.

ETA: Wasn’t as close as the official stream made it look, Everyday Astronaut had a great view from the side

https://x.com/elonchapo/status/1845444305105617172?s=46&t=hUTQWHj9NQWf8Y8RgMv1TA

absolutely my first thought

Those flaps look scared.

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Thus far the reentry looks a lot calmer than last time.

Looks like there might be a little bit of meltiness happening but overall much better than IFT 4.

Certainly way way way smoother. Still wouldn’t want to be inside that thing.

Ship landing right next to the buoy at the target site is also very good.

How much extra crap are they dumping into the atmosphere by flying that booster back to earth instead of just using parachutes? How much smaller is the payload they are boosting to space to make room for the fuel used to land? Would be interesting to see if they are actually saving any money or resources doing it this way.

You are way, way underestimating the difficulty of using parachutes for a craft of this size.

Probably, but I’m familiar enough with the rocket equation to know that everything you lift off the ground is really expensive so reducing your payload by a 1/4 or a 1/5 to carry enough fuel to land makes everything else more expensive or requires additional launches. At least Elon is doing his best to piss off the FAA so much they never give him another launch license so it may not matter…

It’s something like 100 tons to orbit with reuse and 120 tons if they expended the booster and Starship.

The whole plan with Starship is reducing those costs by reusing the same rockets to launch (slightly) smaller payloads. If they can reuse both stages the launch costs drop from an entire rocket + fuel to just the fuel, which for a full stack is about $1 million which works out to around $10 per kg to orbit.

The fuel required for the landing is a tiny fraction of the fuel required for going up. The majority of the speed is scrubbed due to drag and as the booster is far lighter at the end, it also takes a lot less fuel per unit of speed.

Parachutes also have a weight. Slowing down under parachutes puts strain on the booster that it doesn’t face during regular operation, so the hull would need to be reinforced to cope with it. It’s very questionable if it would even save weight.

We haven’t even got to the issues that the unpowered flight would make it impossible to know the exact landing area and the issue that the tall booster might tip over on landing.

I’m hoping someone who wasn’t under Elon’s sway did the math and they are actually getting stuff to space more efficiently. I’m not asking anyone here to do the proof…

Parachutes aren’t going to work on the moon though

or mars, lulz

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https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1845922924315938922
That approach angle is nuts.

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Literally firing a missile into a billion dollars of stage 0 ground equipment. Humans are good at weird things.

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1845966756579627167
Booster view.