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1 hour ago, sh1pman said:

Also, in the absence of competing fully reusable rockets they can charge whatever they want for a Starship launch, up to F9-FH numbers.

Technically, they can charge more than F9/FH if they discontinue the F9/FH flights, which is something I don't consider unimaginable. Right now F9 is the workhorse, but Starship is intended to not only be more capable but also replace F9. Once they are comfortable with Starship and have a couple of functional units, they may decide it's too expensive to maintain two designs and production lines, and just drop F9. At that point, price for Starship launch can be significantly higher than F9. Even in that scenario it might still be cheaper for customers, since they would be sharing a ride with somebody or multiple somebodies.

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3 hours ago, sh1pman said:

We’ll see. Expectation ≠ reality, and Starship failure rate is unknown beforehand.

Also, in the absence of competing fully reusable rockets they can charge whatever they want for a Starship launch, up to F9-FH numbers.

True, and it's worth pointing out that the $1-2 million is SpaceX's cost, not the price they charge to customers.

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There is no incentive to leave money on the table minus credible competition.

If NG turns out to be very competitive with F9, they will have SS, it only needs to beat NG for the same payloads (there are not really any other competing vehicles in development at all).

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23 minutes ago, Lukaszenko said:

Nice animation. What would be the point of landing it on a droneship though?

Less damage to environment in case of anomaly, I think. Or it is just more fancy background in animation.

That braking maneuver is crazy and impossible in real world. If they had not succeeded in another impossible task, landing and reusing first stage of orbital booster in economically feasible way, I would not believe.

Edited by Hannu2
minor fix
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8 hours ago, Lukaszenko said:

What would be the point of landing it on a droneship though?

To pay for the animation just once.

8 hours ago, tater said:

No crater if there is a problem?

Passengers are agreed.
(Though, it's harder to gather them from bottom.)

Edited by kerbiloid
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That terrific animation made me wonder what how the footprint of Starship compares to the footprint of the F9B5 first stage, so I did a quick overlay.

nebraska-shaded.png

This isn't to physical scale; rather, it is scaled such that it shows the relative fooprints of the two vehicles. You can see that F9B5 has a much bigger footprint relative to its height. However, it's not QUITE as bad as you might assume just by looking at Starship. 

Not knowing the exact distribution of mass inside a landed starship, it's hard to know the exact fatal tipover angle. But it's not too much worse than F9B5's.

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It should also be noted that because the F9B5 has a quadrilateral footprint, the overlay above actually exaggerates by about 41%. The critical tipover angle for F9B5 must be measured from a tipover on two legs, not a tipover on one leg.

If you adjust for the actual tipover angle on F9B5 it gives you a better idea:

Spoiler

nebraska-shaded.png

 

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55 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Not knowing the exact distribution of mass inside a landed starship, it's hard to know the exact fatal tipover angle. But it's not too much worse than F9B5's.

So with some bigger legs (which we know are in the works), Starship could have a comparable tip angle to F9. Auto-levelling, which is also supposedly in development, would help a lot too. Not bad.

Also, speaking of tip angles, it looks like B1061 came down a little crooked:

 

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I wonder if they'll still want to use this booster for Crew-2...If the verticality issues are just with the legs, it shouldn't be a problem, but you have to wonder what caused it to slide all the way to the corner and lean like that.

20 minutes ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

Who's excited for Nov 21st? 2 F9 launch and landing within 10 hours!

I hope they don't get delayed!

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4 minutes ago, cubinator said:

I wonder if they'll still want to use this booster for Crew-2...If the verticality issues are just with the legs, it shouldn't be a problem, but you have to wonder what caused it to slide all the way to the corner and lean like that.

I'd guess they can just replace the crush cores on the legs and it should be good to go. Worse case they replace one or more legs. There doesn't seem to be any visible damage on the body of the booster.

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47 minutes ago, tater said:

yikes

 

Yeesh, looks like me coming home from work most nights. :wacko:

15 minutes ago, cubinator said:

wonder if they'll still want to use this booster for Crew-2...If the verticality issues are just with the legs, it shouldn't be a problem, but you have to wonder what caused it to slide all the way to the corner and lean like that.

Rough seas, maybe? I don’t recall the landing looking that hard, I wonder if a big wave after the fact could have caused enough of a bang to collapse one of the crush cores. 

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2 hours ago, tater said:

yikes

Some feedback there, the ASDS is listing to port because the F9 is on that side (and leaning).

Spoiler

EnNBdTVXUAY2smN?format=jpg&name=medium

Remarkably robust, really, you'd think in any sort of sea it would have fallen over.

Come one and all to see the magnificent Leaning Tower of Pisa SpaceX!

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