Science and engineering is awesome sometimes
A live camera, near to where a spaceship traveling thousands of miles an hour, re-entered the atmosphere…
60s spaceflight, you’d be lucky to have it land somewhere in a planned 100mile radius!
Fantastic effort by the whole spacex team.
It truly shows what we as humans can do. If we work together, not against.
The whole chopsticks thing has been a meme for a number of years. Crazy to see it work out.
Amazing achievement but I haven’t seen what the aim of the manoeuvre is? Can anyone enlighten me?
Quick reuse is the end game. Being able to land on the same place you took off from, refuel, and go again. The chopsticks also act as the lifting mechanism to stack the ship on top. The other advantage is you don’t need to carry landing legs up with you, so more weight for the payload
Also allows a simpler configuration of the engines and less danger of incinerating the landing pad.
I love the way that in Star Wars etc those 1000+ tonne space ships can land anywhere with no scorch marks and hardly any dust!
So, tonight SpaceX try again to see if they can make to 2 for 2 catching the superheavy booster again! Should be exciting, and well worth watching if you are still awake. Launch time approx 10pm.
Information here:
And my favourite streamer here:
Will starship return to the pad?
I have no time for Elon anymore
I agree. Elon can completely get in the bin as far as I’m concerned. But although he owns SpaceX, it’s not all him.
I follow what they do closely out of passion for aerospace and new technology. It’s the dozens of engineers and scientists that are doing all the work who, if all goes well, I’ll be celebrating.
I want to see SpaceX succeed in spite of the fact it will make Elon even richer than he already is.
If it wasn’t for Elon, all those others would be working for NASA: doing what NASA’s been doing for decades instead of innovating.
Starship itself will be doing a virtual tower landing in the Indian ocean, just as in Flight 5.
Basically the flight is the same as with Flight 5, but with a Raptor Engine relight in space.
Interesting listening to the stream. They said the steeper re-entry will “push the limits, and likely exceed the limits, or the star ship”. Seems they might almost be looking to take it past it’s thermal limits today on purpose. Also talked about removing a load of the heat shield too.
Is this being streamed on anything that doesn’t require a TV licence?
No go for catch Going to do the backup soft land in the ocean.
Well, they absolutely nailed the ship landing!
Was impressed! I was expecting it to RUD due to the stress they put on it.
Got to respect that engineering.
Starship Flight 7 announced for 11th Jan 2025!