Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship make NASA Crazy

Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship make NASA Crazy
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#techalpha
#spacex
#elonmusk
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Sources of image & video:
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Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship make NASA Crazy
No Chopsticks arm! No Catch tower!
SpaceX is working on another landing method for both Starship and Booster: Landing on a drone ship.
So, what is the real reason why SpaceX chose this landing method?
Let’s find out on today’s episode of Alpha Tech:
Since 2021, when Starship first appeared, Elon Musk and SpaceX have begun harboring bold plans to land the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage of Starship on a platform in the vast ocean.
However, a while later, this method seemed no longer feasible due to the emergence of the Mechazilla tower with its unique "chopstick" arms, capable of catching and landing the rocket in a special way.
Interestingly, recently, we have seen the prospect of sea landings return, particularly the use of autonomous drone ships to receive the massive Starship spacecraft.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship make NASA Crazy
Although this is just a small detail we found in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) published by the FAA in June, it also indicates the development of this method in the near future. SpaceX may be exploring the potential benefits of landing both the Starship second stage and the Super Heavy booster at sea.
First, let's talk about landing the Booster.
Through its Falcon rockets, SpaceX has slowly but surely refined and perfected the recovery and reuse of orbital-class rocket boosters – Rather than coasting 500-1000 kilometers downrange after stage separation and landing on a drone ship at sea, those boosters flipped around, canceled out their substantial velocities, and boosted themselves a few hundred kilometers back to the Florida or California coast, where they finally touched down on basic concrete pads.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship make NASA Crazy
Unsurprisingly, canceling out around 1.5 kilometers per second of downrange velocity (equivalent to Mach ~4.5) and fully reversing that velocity back towards the launch site is an expensive maneuver, costing quite a lot of propellant. For example, the nominal 25-second reentry burn performed by almost all Falcon boosters likely costs about 20 tons (~40,000 lb) of propellant. The average ~35-second single-engine landing burn used by all Falcon boosters likely costs about 10 tons (~22,000 lb) of propellant. Normally, that’s all that’s needed for a drone ship booster landing.
For return-to-launch-site (RTLS) landings, Falcon boosters must also perform a large ~40-second boostback burn with three Merlin 1D engines, likely costing an extra 25-35 tons (55,000-80,000 lb) of propellant. In other words, an RTLS landing generally ends up costing at least twice as much propellant as a drone ship landing. Using the general rocketry rule of thumb that every 7 kilograms of booster mass reduces payload to orbit by 1 kilogram and assuming that each reusable Falcon booster requires about 3 tons of recovery-specific hardware (mostly legs and grid fins) a drone ship landing might reduce Falcon 9’s payload to low Earth orbit (LEO) by ~5 tons (from 22 tons to 17 tons). The extra propellant needed for an RTLS landing might reduce it by another 4-5 tons to 13 tons.
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[toddmarshall]

Elon's a bright guy. He'll invent an electric rocket with regenerative braking.

[pchris]

Your high school English teacher saw that title and is shaking their head. Try again and tell us what you were tryin to say, please.

[Brentsfriend]

Elon is so smart he'll invent the anti gravity magnetic engine for Starships.

[PlanXV]

They need to catch the rocket because they get one free pass from the FAA if they dont land on land 😊

[JRRHellFirePhoenix]

This video title is hella misleading bro the plan with starship is to land where you launch so you can launch land fuel repeat

[kennethwers]

Put the landing gear(clamps) on the landing pad (drone ship). Long vertical bar type clamps would hinge down and in, with the booster's weight. No tower needed as most of the weight is the engines and pumps would be clamped tight with the long vertical bar clamps.

[saumyacow]

Starship was originally touted as 150 tons to LEO. Now it's looking more like 50. its tiles are proving problematic. Now we are talking about barge recovery. The dream of rapid reuse keeps slipping and with it the economics of Starship and Elon's fantastic claims about cost are fading into history.

[dragoncarver]

Why is there a difference between landing on a drone ship and solid ground? Gravity is the same everywhere and the speed from falling from... lets say 30k feet is still the same no matter what. It would take the same amount of thrust to slow it down no matter where.

[travisr]

Elon gave up on drone ship landings for starship years ago and to prove it he sold his last ideas. Where are you getting this?

[roberthumphrey]

Meanwhile back at the ranch the competition is still trying to reach orbit.
Space x is plodding away trying new recovery techniques.

[scissortailcoins]

If your numbers are correct & using RP-1 at $2.3/kg, a Boostback burn would cost between $57, 000 - $84, 000 more than just landing on a drone ship.

[dja]

Falcon 9 appears to have legs that can handle fairly rough seas. I’m not aware of sea state having been a limiting factor. The legs on the heavy that can handle it………

[BruceJSkelly]

The next challenge, IMHO, after catching a booster will be de-tanking it. So far it appears that the quick disconnects are taking a beating leaving their operation questionable. Venting propellant would seem to be risky to the surrounding infrastructure.

[g-a-mwear]

Elon. You need to buy an old aircarrier. It holds up to six thousand ppl. You only need about 2000 workers or xnavy. You could go anywhere comfortably.

[zrebbesh]

Look for SpaceX to acquire additional launch facilities (so as to have 2 in the northern and 2 in the southern hemisphere) so the first-stages can just shift one facility eastward and to the opposite side of the the equator with every launch. That way they need no boostback that kills their payload capacity and need no long sea journeys that kill their turnaround time. The additional facilities would pay for themselves in fairly short order if SpaceX has a heavy launch schedule.

[davidredfern]

FAA is the biggest obstacle for Space x, , seems like they answer to Boeing and the democrats

[wird]

Buy a floating rig in the gulf that is retired, not in use, retrofit it as a landing pad. Buy another one for launching. Go into international waters if he has to.

[WorkerDroid]

I bet there is a plan to establish launch/landing sites in a series of places around the globe. Specifically for booster recovery and launch. Not at sea, ….on land based facilities. There is a desirable distance for a super heavy launch and the landing site down range. 1000 miles? Something like that I suspect. Imagine launching at position 1, land at facility2, refuel, launch again, land at facility 3, and so on. The boosters are going to be used many times, perhaps hundreds of times. With cooperation this could make things very efficient. Less fuel for landing burns. I hope this makes sense..

[Morganaut]

surely landing the starship on a drone ship pad would completely throw the whole idea of starship out the window as it is intended to be the first fully reusable interplanetary rocket hence the mechzilla allows for rapid turnover in flight where as a drone ship has to be towed back aswell the size of the starship booster is insane so they would need a larger pad as once they add legs if needed for the starship booster it will need a very large surface to land so this whole concept just doesn’t make sense to me it would make more sense to either build a catch tower further away in different location or take the booster into orbit with the first stage and have meco occur their then you could have the starship do a de-orbit burn then a landing burn but that does also come with a plethora of other things to then overcome but it will definitely be interesting to see what elon and the spacex team do

[darrendaines]

Are spacex maybe thinking converting the oil drilling rigs to oceanic mobile catching platforms?? Could be the perfect option