CatastrophicFailure

2015 someone said. Perigee is likely 138km, extremely not norminal.

Bringing down a couple of modules on Starship sounds entirely realistic to me. Perhaps not easy, or cheap, but “we choose to do the things because they are hard” & all that. Could be a good excuse to demonstrate robotic construction tech, use that instead of EVAs to disconnect the various fittings. Doesn’t need to be pretty or maintain function, after all, and if something gets damaged it’s all going in the drink anyway. Someone did a plot of IFT-4’s reentry loading and it only peaked around 1.5G, ISS modules should have no trouble withstanding that. At the very least an off-the-shelf crew Starship could strip most of the interior, maybe the Coupola, for recovery. Even that would be a, well, coup… Mockups in a museum just aren’t the same as even a piece of the genuine article. Cue Indiana Jones.

Got a new toy. Puppy approves. …sort of.

“Solved” wrt to Starship and its reuse is the context here. SpaceX will be getting plenty of data from a similar atmospheric regime (hypersonic/translunar speeds in the upper atmosphere), enough to extrapolate to Mars, so it’s not reinventing the wheel, either. We’ve already seen from some of their earliest BFR renders that they already have some idea, carbon-Starship is shown flying a Mars entry inverted at times, using aerodynamic lift to actually hold itself down in the atmosphere. So, it’s an extension and further optimization of work they’re already doing. Dunning-Kruger…

I would say no, not at all. Once Earth EDL is solved, which they are very near to now, and which is necessary for both Earth and lunar operations, extending that to Mars EDL will be a relatively simple problem. Long before they ever start bending metal for such a mission, they will already have LOADS of data on how Starship handles during a similar entry regime. And now that no mishap report is (likely to be) required for IFT-4, I think we’re going to see the pace of development rapid ramp up, then again after the first successful catch, then again after the first reuse. Just like HLS, a Mars sample return is a natural and “easy” extension of stuff they’re doing anyway.

Fwiw I’ve had Starlink for a couple years now, still waiting on that reliable 3G cell tower, let alone 5G… Also outta likes so… Only 1.5G? That is very gentle for a reentry! (Looking at you, Hubble.)

Because it’s really and truly flying. Also keep in mind this descent would otherwise be much steeper, it’s only 3/4 of an orbit with perigee below the surface somewhere around Hawaii. On a “normal” trajectory that pe would still be above the surface, so this crazy reentry may be even more punishing than “usual.” Of all the posts to run out of likes on…

Welp… seems this adage stubbornly clings to truth… kinda like that fin… holey— Our brains are all still locked to meters per second, not kilometers per hour. The mental translation takes a minute.

Is there a translation somewhere?

“Still Reading the Instructions.”

Missed a golden opportunity here to call it New Evergiven, New Billy O’Tea, New Istanbul-Not-Constantinople, anything better.

Seems to have been a Starlink.

I’ve found that to make it work, you have to copy the link from the little “copy link” icon, then paste it into a browser tab, then copy that link from the status bar and paste it here. You have to wait for it to pop up in the forum window before hitting “submit” too.

Are they perhaps vertically challenged and six in number with oddly descriptive names?

You’re a regular Didney princess.

Respectfully, you say this, and then anecdotes are exactly what you offered. Here’s a statistic: EV fires are ten, eighty, even a hundred times less likely to occur in the first place. Even if they are more likely to be “catastrophic” (however you’re defining that), that catastrophe is still less likely to occur. By your own statement (brine solution, etc) it’s already a solved problem, it just requires different tactics and equipment. Such is the evolution of fire response from the beginning (fighting a massive fuel spill/fire also requires special tactics and equipment).

Your information here is incredibly out of date. I can’t speak for other mfrs but a Tesla battery can take a significant amount of damage and not catch fire, as each cell is thermally isolated from the others. Here’s a Model 3 battery that went sideways into a tree, did way more damage than “landing on a sharp rock,” and didn’t catch fire. And speaking of landing on a sharp rock, you hear about the Model Y that was deliberately driven off a cliff, and not only did it not catch fire despite all the sharp rocks, everyone walked away? Also, the battery of any Tesla made today should last the life of the vehicle, and then some. An “old” pack just isn’t going to see that kind of degradation, any more than a gas engine (which also loses efficiency with age). I can post the graph if you want, I bought my first Model X used with 36k miles, sold it 40k miles later. Over that time my degradation was completely flat, I lost no meaningful amount of range. It used to be that EVs would see a sharp drop of around 10% in the first year, leading to this myth, but degradation then tapers off to little to nothing. Even that no longer seems to be the case with newer vehicles with better battery management.

Jet pack incoming.

Good article with some equally interesting discussion down in the comments. TL:DR due to potential delays with Starship, Orion’s heat shield, et al, NASA may be considering an Apollo-9-esq mission of putting Orion into LEO to dock with a stripped-down Starship for habitability and other tests. Or, if you believe the conspiracies, a “camel’s nose under the tent” to obviate SLS entirely… derp… here’s the article… https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/04/nasa-may-alter-artemis-iii-to-have-starship-and-orion-dock-in-low-earth-orbit/?comments=1&comments-page=1

Only if they bring back Spirit & Opportunity too.

For anyone else who’s brain absolutely will NOT let them rest until this useless knowledge is known… that wood be a pallet approximately 135x82x11ft and weighing 18,750 tons, and is either half the annual production of pennies or all the pennies in circulation as of 2012 depending on which nonsense interwebz source you trust. so yeah, splash. BIG splash.

Finders keepers.