Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship! Starship Flight 5 UPGRADE...

Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship! Starship Flight 5 UPGRADE...
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#alphatech
#techalpha
#spacex
#elonmusk
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Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship! Starship Flight 5 UPGRADE...
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.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship! Starship Flight 5 UPGRADE...
Interestingly, recently, we have seen the prospect of sea landings return, particularly the use of autonomous drone ships to receive the massive Starship spacecraft.
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.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is to land both Starship Booster on Droneship! Starship Flight 5 UPGRADE...
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.
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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[raystevens]

If I was SpaceX I would keep my gard against the Chinese space program.

[jimplante]

Terraforming another planet is the greatest statement that humanity can can make to the cosmos

[falvegas]

Faalcon9 Booster Volume is ~ 25, 000 Cu Ft. However Starship Booster Volume is ~ 130, 000 Cu Ft -- that's a huge "Cylinder" and presents many More "TONS" OF Wind-Loads on the Structure ATTEMPTING A "VERY-PRECISION CATCH". We hear of Fuel Consumption & Engines but we do wonder about ALL the Factors Effecting "PRECISION".

[Eduardude]

A big part of the success of Space X is that Musk sets such an immense and visionary goal -- colonization of Mars with a million people. That revolutionary goal, combined with Musk's attitude toward and methods of continual, relentless, iterative innovation, inspire the most brilliant and driven engineers and scientists to seek to work at Space X and to go as fast as humanly possible in achieving the goal.

[On-down-the-road]

I have to ask, where this video is produced. The reason I ask is because in the USA, we use imperal mesurements. 30 years ago we were confused by the introduction of a new smaller metric system. It was revoked by 85% voting to keep the imperal system witch is just easier. The metric micro mesurements are so differnt. And it is backwards. Grams, and kelo grams. Dont remember if kelo was 100, or 1000.still still sounds like less than a gram. Dewey's Decemal is much easier to understand. So pleas if you insist to use foreign mesurements, please use both.

[kevinspencer]

I think NASA should add a Starship to the Lunar Gateway. A Starship that could maneuver it if needed plus be a crew quarters or more room for astronauts, experiments etc. it could also be an emergency vehicle if needed to return astronauts to earth.

[Kaaramu]

this comment section is making me lose brain cells

[joseeoliviero]

I think it would be smart to make 10 perfect landings on a drone ship before attempting the catch. Even then, only a small number of ships can be caught.

You need landing legs for Mars, moon & for point to point landings. The only launch not requiring landing legs (that can be caught) seems to me, to be the units used to refuel the orbiting fuel station. You will need 10 plus launches.

Other than that, you need legs on most spaceships.

[jeffreydavis]

Space X make years into weeks 🚀 everyone will need to work together 🌎 Elon Musk will be the greatest minds of are times 🇺🇸🙏

[donscheid]

IMO changing his mind without having tried, I think has two factors that affected the decision. He acknowledged he was wrong about the ability of the initial launch pad to withstand the blast without a deluge system, and the testing of the chop sticks may not have met the criteria needed, they are massive and that much mass is not going to move and stop quickly and precisely enough to do what they need. It is like asking a semi-truck to go from 0-60 and then back to 0 in a few seconds with no swaying or over-travel... not going to happen, .

[erikev]

Over 1 hour of irrelevant blabbing. Old stock media

[GarySarah-spbo]

Starship is like vacon9 using computers to land them right on the landing sites. Starships can be caught by the chopsticks by this way. It's safe like parking a car In a garage. Not everyone can do this.

[jeffreydavis]

Space X the future is for hopefully young engineer younger kids something look forwarded 🚀🌎🙌❤️

[robertbrander]

WOW ! Mega Genius Elon Musk just Shocked NASA and the Space World ... He just Announced that after many years of Evaluation, testing and retesting ... It is Best to land his BF Rocket ... Pointy End Up ! :D

[zaz]

Starship Booster on Droneship? I wanna see Any Starship landing will be awesome though!

[robmakey]

Elliptical cams that are totally mechanical and need no sensors or power. Simple and effective. The weight of the vehicle is the force that holds the ship. Forget catching. The way forward is self wedging with initial movement from cables that cover a larger target area and the cams around the ship would self centralise by the cams gripping action when the downward force is applied. The cams could cover the whole circumference instead of the chopsticks only either side.

[larryyost]

No matter how tall starship is you have to admit it is one beautiful piece of work

[RobertLutece]

It makes sense, on paper, to land the booster on a drone ship, but not the second stage.

Once you're in orbit, you can pick your reentry spot, so you may as well RTLS, and if tower downtime is the concern it's going to be a lot cheaper to add towers on land than deal with drone ships.

I'd really like to know how much payload they gave up with the changes to the thermal system.

[djohannsson]

The center of the landing target area on the drone ship is open. The flames exit through the opening downward toward the lower deck flame diverter outward to the sea. The wings you see in the booster picture are not wings, but target side stabilizers and hold down clamps. They are a split ring mechanism that closes from multiple directions at a time.

[Goearthtour]

I’ve said it many times. Putting gyroscopic stabilizers on the chopsticks would probably make them far more stable and accurate. And while I’m at it building an oil rig type landing pad down range you will save tons of money weight and fuel and just float the things back to port on a much cheaper conventional ship. Keep the chopstick idea but put it over the water so when accidents happen (and they definitely will) you don’t destroy an entire landing site. It just drops in the ocean.