darthgently

That is a lot of words just to make the blanket wetter. You aren’t getting it. A few humans on the Moon has much less real world implication than lowering cost to orbit 1000x+. What has more implication; a few astronauts on the Moon or most heavy industry moved off world, multiple orbiting habitats, and most humans vacationing in space or on the Moon at some point in their lives? It is all about cost to orbit. Apollo was a grand and amazing thing, but mostly symbolic, and compared to humanity off world en masse was a very expensive dog and pony show. The low cost to orbit that reusable rocketry ushers in has staggering implications in comparison. Apollo showed that something greater than Apollo was possible if we spent even more unimaginable amounts of money, while reusable rocketry will make that something greater actually happen. Implications.

I am immune to your wet (though soft) blanket. This is the major piece of a feasible freight train to orbit. And done in the face of so much negativity. I give SpaceX a big W with zero “buts” or “not enoughs”

Perhaps the steps at the engineering school were a lesson in disguise: Consider the user in all your designs

Was it possibly normal venting of methane that ignited from aero heating? I think I got that from Scott Manley, can’t remember for sure The precision on catch is amazing. Those detonation waves on launch are awesome

You poor misguided featherless biped. Everyone knows cats invented the internet mostly to have warm keyboards to sleep on

Positively disruptive

Excellent video from across the Rio Grande in Mexico maybe? check out the shockwaves and the sunlight bent by heat at the landing. Though I do wish some of these cell phone vids weren’t cut off before the sonic booms crackles arrive. It’s like missing dessert

Any guesstimates on how far down range hot staging occurred? It happened around 69km altitude but am curious. I’m thinking that the average slope was at least 2:1 if not higher

Flight-Proven, Taxpayer-Friendly Boosters™️

Maybe. The other angle is that even in those hellish conditions: zero relight failure, zero engine failures at all. But yeah, to last multiple reuses probably turning it dow from 11 to 10 or so might be a good move.

Also, to clarify, I am definitely talking vibe as Tater noted. If you watched Apollo 11 as a kid it might click more. If doing a historical analysis it is different. Apollo was Lewis and Clark. That booster catch is like the first real freight locomotive combined with track laid halfway to California. The implications of Lewis and Clark was big. The implications of the transcontinental railroad were vastly bigger.

Agreed. But the main achievement today was popping a big cluster of pessimism bubbles. The number of people that now think SpaceX is on to something just expanded by orders of magnitude.

The valuation of SpaceX has to be punching through multiple estimated ceilings after this.

Freight train to orbit, bay-bee. This has been so long coming, and I don’t mean just the SpaceX phase. The Moon landing was incredible, but mostly symbolic. If the Moon missions were like Lewis and Clark, this more like transcontinental railway industrial strength epic, almost. Half the track has been laid today, now it is just time and persistence. The technology has been shown feasible by and large Tater said: Yeah, actually. My memory of Apollo 11 is incredibly vague—more about a bunch of people at the house (I was 4)—later Apollos I watched as well (all of them, my mom was super into it), and I remember the coverage, the different newscasters, etc. Hard since the video has been reused so often what's real and what I'm conflating with later rewatches I can't say. Shuttle I remember clearly, watched many earlylaunches, and it was astounding to watch. This isabsolutely up there with Apollo/Shuttle IMHO. I was 7 yo, but I remember it. Older brothers made sure I fully appreciated it explaining stuff and pointing things out. I’m certain that memories of later landings are mixed in there, but the tension when Armstrong was going down the ladder is unforgettable and singular

I have no “likes” left so this is a note to blanket-like all posts in this topic today. Did any other older guys get a flashback to the Moon landing? This was huge and historic. The after shocks will be socially reverberating for awhile and the implications for space exploration just amplified magnificently. I completely forgot about Starship for about 20 minutes because the booster landing saturated my wetware completely. Starship performed amazingly also, but that catch. Just wow.

This is the crux

Nice loading screen. Can you catch the booster? https://starshipthegame.spacex.com/

Weaponized bureaucrats. I’m picturing the spiders of Mirkwood spinning webs of sticky red tape

Not going to install an app merely for a cat video, lol. Whatever vid format Telegram is using Brave browser doesn’t do that

That was it. Oklahoma. Obligatory SpaceX content, good stuff from Ryan Hansen

Just wow.

Another journalist adds weight to the rumor. I don’t know what the ou stuff is about, didn’t dig

Sorry if you got excited reading the first 4 words before getting to F9. I almost didn’t post for that reason. Then decided to post for that reason

My gut says the math would not work out favorably in most cases doing it this way unless the initial high AP was useful for part of the mission. Must try this in KSP to be certain, ha

Very true. Often “labor saving cleaning devices” end up costing twice the hassle as “maintenance increasing cleaning devices”. You never have to make a last minute run to the hardware store to get more elbow grease and the elbow runs on sandwiches which are typically readily available. Elbow support infrastructure is already in place and mature