Space and Science BS Thread

It’s not about the damage but the cost of a crew, ship and crane to go fetch them, especially out in the Indian Ocean. If it were part of an ongoing plan like F9 recovery that’s one thing but to gear up for the very few (hopefully) they would attempt to recover it’s probably not worth the trouble. The SS is cheap, it’s the engine alloys that are high value but are they high value enough? Apparently not enough even for the more local booster engines. Obviously if it doesn’t happen immediately they or someone else could wait until all the boosters that are going to be ditched have been and conduct a salvage operation to bring them up but it may be only a handful of boosters. The ships will be in very deep water very far away.

 

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1798732390313218305?s=46

 

Tim Dodd thinks by the end of August. That seems to be a pretty good timeframe. I think we will see a MASSIVE push to stack OLIT2 and pour concrete for the OLM pad. They MUST have something close to being finished before risking their only operational launch pad.

I'm not sure SpaceX had any assets in the area for those kinds of views. I did hear one of the NSF commentators say that he thought he saw a plane in the vicinity of the TFR in the Indian Ocean, but he didn't know if it was SpaceX or not.

The deorbit burn is only to lower the perigee of the vehicle so that it can begin to re-enter the atmosphere. Pretty sure it has nothing to do with lowering the speed that Ships hit the upper atmosphere, otherwise, your reentry angles will be WAY steeper.

 

Fetching the booster, maybe. It's in the gulf and didn't get as hot on reentry. The ship however most likely sank on its own. It likely burned a large hole in the body around the flap areas for water to start filling it up. And if that didn't do it, the cracks from hot steel contracting when it hit cold water probably would

 

I have a hard time believing they could have both the second tower and OLM ready for use this year or even the first quarter of the next. They either have to risk the first one, try a catch with the second before the mount is done, or wait until it’s finished along with plumbing and tanks for water and a second tank farm and berms. Much of the work cannot be done concurrently and it will take time. If they don’t want to risk their only launch facility but insist on attempting a catch ASAP then using tower 2 is the only option. If they do try for a catch next launch it might have to be the first tower but if they wait for OFT-6 they might have the option for tower 2. I’ve no idea what they’ll choose to do but those are the choices.

 

It's not the for reuse - it's for the data from a ship that survived reentry and seeing how things fared. Plus, the things are literally full of air and fairly leak resistant (barring splash damage), you'd /need/ to intentionally sink it (FTS charge). And 'NE indian ocean' means 'next to australia'.

Oops Blue Danube. Mixed my songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZoSYsNADtY

He's thinking of the retropropulsion burn the F9s do during reentry. They don't provide a lot of dV but do shield the F9s from the atmo a bit.

 

She’s a scrapper
https://x.com/esherifftv/status/1799101674138579381?s=46

 

Madagascar is also and nowhere near Oz. Not that they would splash it down anywhere “near” either one. The idea was to miss everyone by a large margin. I do agree that it’s not about salvage but examining the parts however I don’t think they place it on the same level as an NTSB investigation so they’ll use what they get from telemetry and consider that sufficient for their means and goals. Both are structurally fully sound only when pressurized so it’s hard to say what happens even with a soft landing and thermal shock does its thing. I’d be curious to see if they do end up salvaging something but I don’t believe it’s necessary to the process. I expect they’d be fine with the Aussie’s sinking it for them if it is found still afloat.

 

Well apparently SpX had the 'GO America' offshore and it just returned to port.

https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=8968181 ... checking the forums now to see if there's any video of anything on deck. If not, they could have deliberately sunk booster/make sure it sank.

Forums say that the ship landing zone was here.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/1...3m3!8m2!3d-18.8097222!4d104.4266667?entry=ttu

...

Post flight interview.

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

 

No, he was right and I’m ignorant about it. I didn’t think it was about shedding a significant amount of DV, just enough to put it on a particular trajectory but no longer sufficiently at orbital velocity. What’s still unclear is it sounds like a true descent from orbit for Starship would entail an even faster reentry, not much, but still some. Orion’s return from the moon had a much higher velocity and apparently suffered excessive damage to its heat shield. So is there a lower limit to reinsertion that still allows for skimming the upper atmosphere and is that limit at or close to orbital velocity?

 

I don't think they will try catching with OLIT2, even if it's just the tower. I meant that they want the second launch pad closer to being done than where they are now. Some are speculating that stacking OLIT2 is only going to take 6 weeks, due to how much it has already been prepped with the pipes and internal stairs.

Boosters don't need the entry burn, as they call it with F9s.

I bet he had a hard time keeping his eyes where they belong.

Didn't Orion skip several times and that was the cause of the excessive ablation? I remember reading that they were going to change the reentry profile of Orion on Artemis 2 to come in with less skipping.

 

First tower went up in like 5 months. Second tower segments are already built, and much more of the infrastructure is already on the segments compared to the first. Piles are being poured now, and like 5x more of them than the first. There is a good chance they could erect the tower in under 2 months. They don't need tanks, they technically wouldn't even need a launch deck. Those would all just be more vulnerabilities in the event of missing the catch.

 

Just realized- no mishap = no investigation…

Next license would need tweaking if SpX team goes for a catch.

 

https://x.com/rgvaerialphotos/status/1799210440209104983?s=46

 

Died doing what he loved.. Not a bad way to go at 90.
https://x.com/johnkrausphotos/status/1799226821227040888?s=46
https://x.com/jennyhphoto/status/1799236707478274526?s=46
https://x.com/senbillnelson/status/1799246936937300465?s=46

 

Please read my post again. I already suggested a catch without the launch platform. Twice now. However they will need the draw works, the cables run, and the chopsticks mounted and tested with all their actuators, hydraulics and electrical equipment even if a SQD isn’t installed until the platform is done. The Tinker Toy part is the easy part and I believe they could possibly get that done before a launch in August but no way will they be ready to catch with tower 2 by then.

 

It came in at ~30k kph instead of orbital 17k. Hard to say definitely whether is was the skipping or the speed until they can get a different result.

 

https://x.com/bocachicagal/status/1799252741207790072?s=46

 

That’s my take too. Doing aerobatics at 90! Damn!
Sure beats dying of cancer in some godforsaken nursing home.

 

Could be lighting? Shadow is more nearly vertical so sun is on the plate.