Spot the Space Station

[OakIslandBrewery]

Beautiful static fire of Booster 13!

 

[tracer bullet]

So the answer is no.

Sounds ludicrous to me. Gotta say though, before we get there, we have to actually know if it was real. What was actually asked to be studied, if anything at all?

If I agree it's ludicrous if true, do you in turn agree it's entirely possible that he's completely full of $h!t? Or at a minimum grossly overstating something with only a small nugget of truth? If you're having some sort of OMG moment about it, please consider that it might be completely unfounded.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Elon must be bored, I wish he'd just focus more on his companies instead of this type of stuff and that other stuff.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Interesting article about the catch of ITF-5. Now that SpaceX is news worthy there's been a flood of bogus articles. Not sure about this one but it's interesting and seems possible.

https://spacenews.com/starship-supe...n-one-second-of-aborting-first-catch-landing/

 

[TheDudeLebowski]

https://futurism.com/the-byte/boeing-satellite-500-pieces-debris

 

[balrog]

https://futurism.com/the-byte/boeing-satellite-500-pieces-debris

And the Bullock/Clooney movie Gravity becomes real.

 

[Pkrd]

And the Bullock/Clooney movie Gravity becomes real.

Not with our current laws of physics.

 

[balrog]

More ammunition for the next time The Significant Other complains about "all that junk" getting saved "just in case I need it"

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/15-...-1-comes-back-to-life-using-1981-tech-6925636

"15 Billion Miles Away, NASA's Voyager 1 Comes Back To Life Using 1981 Tech"

 

[day_trippr]

Starship 6 launch scheduled for November 18th....

https://www.space.com/space-explora...ng-nov-18-for-next-starship-megarocket-launch

 

[day_trippr]

More on Flight 6

https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/11/08/spacex-targets-starship-flight-6-launch-on-november-18/

 

[day_trippr]

SpaceX released a Starship Flight 5 video package that is stunning AF on a big 4K screen



Flight 6 still scheduled for Monday November 18, with the 30-minute launch window opening at 5:00 p.m. ET.
"Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean."

Cheers!

 

[day_trippr]

Flight 6 pushed to Tuesday 5pm ET...

https://www.space.com/space-explora...ex-stacks-flight-6-starship-megarocket-photos

 

[day_trippr]

Flight 6 still on for this afternoon...

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-6

 

[Konadog]

I don't care what anyone says, space exploration is exciting again! That was fun to watch.

 

[day_trippr]

After the spectacle of Flight 5, punting "the catch" this time was disappointing.
Hopefully they got enough useful data from Flight 6 to justify the expenditure of booster and ship at sea...

Cheers!

 

[passedpawn]

I still see the booster floating out there. At least it's not still burning. Coasties giving it closer and closer looks. The FTS flight termination system appears to be non-functional. It's definitely drifting... somewhere.

 

[passedpawn]

These tests are so great. They really display the engineering process that all designers would LOVE to go through, but rarely given a chance.

To restate, to design almost anything, even non-complex things, it's ideal to have the time and budget to go through a bunch of test designs that allow one to test different options and optimize parts of the design without requiring perfection. That's what SpaceX is doing.

 

[day_trippr]

[shrug] The richest person in the world can spend like that (and the spectacle may be part of the schtick).
The rest of the world probably exploits FEA a lot more and blows up a lot less poopy...

Cheers!

 

[Konadog]

I did like the way they were saying that this was an older model StarShip and that they did things to it, and with it during this flight to stress test things. I don't think they were expecting it to land in one piece.

 

[day_trippr]

Starships will keep being written off anyway until they come up with a way to catch the damn thing
So, yeah, in the mean time they can tweak stuff and see if it helps.
I did notice that the body flap integrity seemed a lot better this time, which is curious considering the "this was an older model Starship" thing...

Cheers!

 

[PCABrewing]

I did like the way they were saying that this was an older model StarShip and that they did things to it, and with it during this flight to stress test things. I don't think they were expecting it to land in one piece.

Yeah, it was cool to see the result of the tile removal on that one flap.
Now they just have to recover enough of it to evaluate the results.
Really fun to watch though.

 

[passedpawn]

[shrug]

shrug? You are hard to impress.

 

[day_trippr]

I'll totally admit to that. I'm old and jaded and still remember 25 cent gasoline

Cheers!

 

[day_trippr]

So "the catch" was aborted because of balky communications between tower and booster.
They're gonna have to solve that pronto...

 

[tracer bullet]

I wondered about that, thanks. It did at least make a nice gentle drop into the ocean, making it seem like it could have been caught had they tried.

 

[passedpawn]

Not sure if you guys saw, but after the booster landed in the ocean, it floated for hours, flames occasionally shooting out of it. Eventually, boats and helicopters approached it. I never learned what happened to that booster. Anyone?

 

[day_trippr]

Solar Probe getting toasty!

 

[balrog]

Not sure if you guys saw, but after the booster landed in the ocean, it floated for hours, flames occasionally shooting out of it. Eventually, boats and helicopters approached it. I never learned what happened to that booster. Anyone?

Was Slim Pickens on it?

 

[balrog]

I think I may have found my new desktop background image.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ce-180985518/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

 

[day_trippr]

Looks angry AF