The chopstick fly-catch maneuver was very impressive. Saw post from Elon this morning that the targeted turnaround time from capture to ready to relaunch when fully implemented is about an hour.
An hour.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
In a few short years we’ll have Humans on Mars. I never expected that in my lifetime and eagerly await the day.

This tech is awesome, but that is still a monumental leap. There are about a bazillion things about space travel that far that are conspiring to kill you. Let alone allow for a round trip.

Here is a link to an X thread with video clips of the California Coastal Commission members and others testifying about the requested increase in launches of SpaceX rockets from Vandenberg Space(!) Force Base. It shows them to be just as incompetent, biased, ignorant and disgusting as you would expect.

Link

I just showed all these to my wife, and she is now ranting about how those people need to suffer to understand human nature. They are sitting there protected by the very people they are trying to prevent from carrying out their role of protecting them and the rest of us. If they had their way there would be no DoD, no Air Force or Space Force, no SpaceX.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sjtill, October 14, 2024 08:42 PM

SpaceX used Vandenberg Space Force Base to loft an NRO satellite about 20 minutes ago.

The video has the whole thing, but I set the playback to start with the part most care about - watching the landing.



Perfection, as always.

It was the 100th flight of a Falcon 9, and the 21st flight for this specific first stage.

I'd say the age of reusable spacecraft is here.

Congratulations to the SpaceX team.

I’m a huge Elon fan so don’t take this the wrong my way. I don’t understand his fascination with Mars. Why would anyone want to leave the most perfect planet for one where you have to live in a bubble because it’s so uninhabitable. The only thing I can think of is if we HAD to due to a cataclysmic event on earth.

^^^^ Do you buy insurance before or after your house burns down?

Because if we have the tech to go to Mars, we can go pretty much anywhere in the System. This will allow us to get to the asteroid belt for materials there, and to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn for the same. This allows us to avoid the "Earth First, we'll mine the other planets later" fallacy since it would be great if we could keep Earth nice.

Today I watched a Falcon rocket carrying an NRO satellite after it was launched from Vandenberg. I had forgotten that the video stream is delayed; so the loooong vapor trail high in the stratosphere was the SpaceX rocket. Not as spectacular as watching at night thogh; after sunset is best.

Preparing to loft 22 Starlinks from the other coast.



And the crowd goes wild with another landing.

here is a view of the capture of the Starship booster as seen from the launch tower

pretty impressive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7qTfc_XuTI

^^^^^^
I’d guess that the Russians and Chinese are impressed too.

the Chinese had a launch of their latest rocket not long ago...failed a few seconds after launch and impacted the ground with a huge fireball

apparently they can save some weight by eliminating a destruct mechanism

they didn't talk much about it did they...things not all they rosy in China's space program

Chinese astronauts are called taikonaut. Is the n silent? China expects to have Chinese taikonaut on the moon by 2030. The food will be out of this world.

Opps.

I want one for my 4th of July festivities.

The title of that video is misleading. The Masseys test site isn't a launch pad, it's an engine test fire platform.

As for Starship, it hasn't seen much luck since upgrading to the Block 2 design. They need to get it together.

Better video from NASASpaceFlight showing the methane section blows first:

^^^ Yep.
Fuel went, followed by the O2 in the stage below.

Looks like fuel tank or plumbing breached/failed during fueling as the fuel expanded quite a bit before rupturing the skin and ignition from a source below and the expanding fuel "cloud" contacted it, then a second later the O2 tank expelled and fed the unconsumed fuel.

The O2 can be seen all around the ground level as the "white clouds" as it does not ignite, while the O2 feeding into the burning fuel causes it to rapidly burn and raise the heat energy and fireball.

Here's a good discussion with slow motion video:

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:
They need to get it together.

Yeah, I mean, it's not rocket science is it? Jeez. Wait . . . what's that again? Hmmm, it IS rocket science you say? Huh, I mean, who knew right? Well, maybe the folks doing this rocket stuff need some space to make mistakes because this might be harder than I suspected at first.

So far, every Block 2 Starship has failed to even return for a landing, while only two Block 1s "failed"--and those were the first two. I put "failed" in quotes because the Flight 1 booster lost control on the first launch and they didn't even have an opportunity to separate the Starship, so there's no way of knowing if that one wouldn't have flown correctly.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I think rocket science should improve as it progresses.

They successfully found another way not to build a rocket.