zolotiyeruki

Hehehe, this can be interpreted at least three ways off the top of my head, and all of them are gloriously humorous!

I'm not terribly concerned about the "landing between towers" issue, because: 1) The towers are likely to be removed. They were originally designed for drilling oil wells, and are unlikely to be suitable for SpaceX's operations. In fact, very little of the existing topsides equipment and structure are likely to be useful. These rigs are going to get stripped down. 2) F9 landings are remarkably accurate, and I believe the same will become true for SS. Heck, with their two attempts to date, they've already been really close. 3) Any new towers could retract a la F9's strongback 4) OCISLY endured multiple hard landings. Sure, SS/SH will be dramatically heavier, but the fact remains that you can build a structure to take it.

Sure, if you were designing a rocket specifically to go to the moon, you could make it significantly more efficient than Starship. But fuel is relatively cheap, and even though the cargo part of the spacecraft would need engineering, you'd be starting with a propulsion and landing section (engines, tanks, control systems, etc) that is already proven.

No worries, and thanks for the follow up!

Eh, I'm sure the birds would have been (safely) blown out of the way if Stage 1 had landed norminally. As always, it'd be interesting to find out what went wrong. It's odd awesome when *not* recovering the booster is the anomaly!

"Master the flip"? It seems to me that they've already got a pretty good handle on the maneuvering algorithms. They're 2 for 2 on that part. It's the engines that are currently giving them trouble. Speaking of which, did SpaceX ever say why the second engine didn't light on SN9?

For stuff going beyond LEO, wouldn't SS's payload have to include whatever stage is necessary to take the real payload to its final destination? Or are SpaceX planning to build SS so that it can re-enter from GTO?

Another option is to switch to slightly-trapezoidal tiles for the nose section, and arrange them in rows. That way, you only have three types of tiles: hexagonal for the cylindrical portion, half-of-a-hexagons at the joint between the rings and the nose cone, and trapezoid.

It quickly becomes a question of whether it makes more sense to improve the design to prevent failures due to external factors, or increase the redundancy to mitigate the failures. In the case of Sn8, you definitely want to improve the fuel system so as to not starve your engines. If a very speedy bird flies up the engine bell, that might be something you address by lighting three engines instead of two.

On the previous attempt, both engines relit just fine, so it was able to flip to the correct orientation just fine. This time, only one engine ever relit.

Looks like only 1 engine relit for landing. It was really trying to start....

Oh, man, my heart about stopped when the countdown paused at T-0:10...

Just bumping this--I tested it this morning, and this mod works in KSP 1.11.

Hi All, There's a new release up on github today, and hopefully CKAN will pick it up shortly. And hopefully I've done all the steps right. This new release is compiled for 1.11, and adds a new "zero" button, for reverting a part's rotation back to 0. That one's for you @Gavin786

That's interesting, because in the most recent launch, they only mentioned a single engine for the landing burn. Maybe they were simplifying it for the masses?

Two thoughts about the recent starlink mission: 1) As I recall, the F9 reuse goal was 10 flights. They now have a booster that has hit 8. Dang, that's impressive, and dang, that's a lot of money saved. 2) In some of the early landing attempts, SpaceX tried some 1-3-1 landing burns, and there was speculation of a 3-engine hoverslam, as an optimization to squeeze a bit more payload into orbit. Why did they abandon those efforts?

I started poking around, and was able to get a "zero" button in place and working, but the layout is messed up. I don't know if I'll be able to get it working in EVA construction mode. As I said before, I'm a complete noob at mods, although I have lots of experience programming. It only took me about half an hour to sort out the code and figure out how to add the zero button.

Given that SH can hover, how much shock loading would we expect to see on the grid fins?

Down there, you'd probably be lucky to dig a foxhole without hitting the water table...

I'm not terribly concerned about landing accuracy--the last few dozen F9 boosters look to have landed within a meter or so of dead center on the landing pad. There aren't many last-second failure modes, and SpaceX have found many already (running out of hydraulic fluid for the gimbals, low header tank pressure, out of fuel during the hoverslam, etc), and there's not much fuel left to go boom at that point anyway. Not that I wish to minimize the damage that 200 tons of stainless steel can do when falling at dozens of meters per second, but we're not talking about a massive explosion even if something *does* go wrong. The ability to hover makes this considerably easier as well, because it means that cm accuracy isn't necessarily required during the landing burn--it can hover and translate as needed for a few seconds. It still sounds bonkers, though.

Hi All, maintainer here. Over Christmas, I'm hoping to dig into the source code for this mod and another I maintain, to see if I can make a few tweaks. Be patient, though--I've never actually *written* any mods, I just recompile them for now, so there'll be a bit of a learning curve...

That is probably another Autopilot mod. Maybe Kramax or AtmosphereAutopilot?

Keep in mind, though, that regardless of the use case on earth, the eventual goal is to land these on Mars, then refuel and return. Depending on the mass of the payload up front, filling the fuel tanks may shift the CoM towards the nose (or toward the rear!). Speaking of which, was there a mass simulator in the nose of SN-8, or was it just a hollow shell? As I recall, it wasn't a dropped tank, it was a change in the voltage spec for some instrument or tank heater.

He hasn't posted in here that I'm aware of. Going that far on a Goliath is impressive, especially with no autopilot, and managing heat with flags is a new trick I've never heard of. That craft had well over 1,200 parts, though. Yeesh, how on earth did his computer handle that? Rigid Attachment, maybe?

A few seconds before ...er....touchdown, lots of green flames from the engine on the left. I seem to remember that being associated with lots of copper combusting that shouldn't be combusting...