136
SpaceX launches starship Mega-Rocket and catches its booster in midair on first try.
(www.smithsonianmag.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
136 points (91.0% liked)
Technology
58678 readers
4516 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I could be mistaken on this: don't they get just one try?
It wasn't the first starship launch but it was the first where they tried to land onto the chopsticks. Last time I believe they simulated the same thing but landed in the ocean instead. They did get just one try with this particular rocket since if it was unsuccesfull the rocket would now be in a million pieces.
For that particular booster, sure. For boosters in general, not really.
They could have tried again with another booster and landing pad.
The landing pad wasn't really at risk. If they had hit it it would have been relatively low speed, by the time it was at the catch attempt it was at like 30 km/h or something. Hitting a big steel object at that speed would have probably done more damage to the booster than anything else
Not necessarily, the launch tower is something like a half billion dollar piece of infrastructure and if it had been damaged or leveled it would have been an enormous setback in terms of money and time, as the second tower is nowhere near ready