Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video] | Hacker News Reader

Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

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Pretty impressive. The engineering team at SpaceX is really something. Some thoughts;

The 'chopsticks catch' was amazing to watch. Seems like it adds a lot of risk and clearly the booster needs additional fire suppression systems :-) perhaps the tower could mount something that sprays the booster like the barges have for the F9 boosters.

The heatshield held out for a much longer time, the asymmetric heating on the flaps was interesting. I had guessed that all four flaps would have equivalent heating based on an approach that was basically that side of the rocket perpendicular to the flow but it seems like that isn't the case. Still it seems like they are close to having something workable here.

The detonation at the end was pretty spectacular too, but I suspect that structurally the tanks failed as the rocket hit the water vs anything that was an engineering failure. Engineering it to be strong enough to land on water would presumably compromise the cargo to orbit number.

The use of Starlink was really interesting. The ability to get live video for the entire re-entry is pretty game changing for engineering. I'd guess there are even more 'views' than they showed (there would be if I were running things :-)) but overall that capability is something that really helps evaluate the changes made.

I can easily imagine that flight 6 will be nominal end to end without any unintended damage. That would enable, perhaps, one of their 'massive' Starlink missions to test cargo delivery. It will also start to give us some better numbers on exactly how much cargo Starship can put in orbit in 'full reuse' mode which is essential if they want to create a fueling station on orbit for the Artemis program.

Again, hats off to engineering at SpaceX, y'all did good.

As to whether catching the booster adds risk - I'm not sure it does.

First, to the extent the booster is out of position in the x (sideways) direction, the chopsticks can move to accomodate error. But actually I think this dimension is the easiest of the three, as the booster has plenty to time to null any error in this dimension.

In the y direction (direction of travel towards the tower), the rails on the chopsticks can cope with the booster touching down along quite a long distance. But importantly, they appear to be smooth, so the pins can initially skid along them and then the booster can swing if it has not fully nulled any horizontal movement. In contrast, if the booster used legs and has not yet fully nulled any horizontal motion at touchdown, there is a greater risk of breaking a leg or simply tipping over.

And in the z direction, it should be possible for the chopsticks can absorb more vertical motion than legs can absorb, because you can easily build in huge springs/dampers/etc into the ground equipment without concern about mass.

Catching also puts the booster in tension rather than compression - it's easier to be rigid in tension than compression.

Finally, if legs were used, the engines would have to get close to the ground during landing, so reflected shock from the ground could cause damage. I know Falcon 9 does this, but the area of the base of Starship is much greater, so there's effectively less room for the reflected energy to escape. Catching completely removes this risk.

On balance, I think they would have better chance of success for each mission by catching. The main downside would be if you fail to catch, you may need to build a new tower, whereas a flat pad would be cheaper and easier to repair.

Seems like it adds a lot of risk

I'm actually wondering about that. If I understand correctly, the arms can move up and down, and pivot around the tower. This allows them to correct for some error in the rocket trajectory and also (presumably) "soften" the final contact. Between the nozzles and the arms, it gives SpaceX a lot of degrees of freedom in the final seconds (you can see how the booster kind of "hovered" right at the end) and in certain respects might even offer more forgiveness than the hard ground.

Could it smash into the tower? For sure. Would that be more dangerous than smashing into the pad? I don't know.

It's a new technique with which we don't have a lot of experience.

> The detonation at the end was pretty spectacular too, but I suspect that structurally the tanks failed as the rocket hit the water vs anything that was an engineering failure.

It's possible that SpaceX programed the AFTS to trigger some time after the rocket touched down in the water. Just to make sure that it completely submerges quickly.

> I can easily imagine that flight 6 will be nominal end to end without any unintended damage.

I think it depends on what you mean by "nominal". SpaceX ultimately wants to catch the 2nd stage as well. I suspect that they are a ways off of that, since it would have to approach over land. The FAA is going to need to have very high confidence that it will do exactly what it's designed to do before they're going to allow that.

I imagine that they will be their own first customer - putting Starlink satellites into orbit while they are gaining confidence in the reliability of the system for external customers.

They have to prove out the landing of the second stage, either with another catch or with landing gear, which they need for the lunar lander anyway.

They showed 4 streams at once during some of the reentry. One view of each control surface. They may have had still more views but just that 4 was a first.

I'm wondering if they'll be using the vertical equivalent of arresting gear on aircraft carriers[0]. See when fighter jets land on aircraft carriers? There's a cable that decelerates them. That, but for vertical landing.

The way these chopsticks are set forces the booster into a dangerous, snake like maneuver (a SnakeX maneuver) at the last second from a vertical setting, to get into the chopsticks. This maneuver is due to the fact chopsticks are short and the booster has to land on one point in space. No degrees of freedom.

Now, imagine if the chopsticks were long. The booster wouldn't have to land at one specific point, but it could now land on a line. One degree of freedom.

Now replace the long chopsticks with cables, and then add another pair of cables perpendicular to them. So you have a pair of parallel cables perpendicular to a second pair of parallel cables. Now the booster doesn't have to land on a line, but can land anywhere in the grid that's covered by the cables. Two degrees of freedom.

Pushing this thought leads to having a sort of iris diaphragm, like the ones in optics, but an iris diaphragm of cables. The diaphragm is open when the booster is about to land, then closes in quickly. Imagine this[1], but it's cables cinching in.

Now, it's a diaphragm of cables, not a diaphragm of rigid beams, so I imagine the deceleration to be even smoother as the cables elongate, and an additional system of springs and dampers to counter the weight of the booster.

The booster is vertical and stays vertical. Granted, an unstable equilibrium, but it beats doing the SnakeX maneuver to get to the chopsticks, and that's another story.

Now, imagine the iris cable diaphragm can move up and down like equipment handling containers, and now you have three degrees of freedom. That's less control to worry about on the booster's side at the worst possible moment, landing, where you can't make adjustments anymore.

This not only means being more forgiving on mistakes related to position, but also on speed and angle. The diaphragm catches the booster at any angle, and given that it cinches way above the center of gravity, the booster goes back to a more stable vertical position.

For the fire, maybe you just need a big hole down there.

- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arresting_gear

- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iris_Diaphragm.gif

What’s the advantage of catching the booster over landing it in the ground? Catching it seems like an extra complication.

>The 'chopsticks catch' was amazing to watch. Seems like it adds a lot of risk and clearly the booster needs additional fire suppression systems :-) perhaps the tower could mount something that sprays the booster like the barges have for the F9 boosters.

There's no reason to reinvent the airport firetruck.

>The heatshield held out for a much longer time, the asymmetric heating on the flaps was interesting. I had guessed that all four flaps would have equivalent heating based on an approach that was basically that side of the rocket perpendicular to the flow but it seems like that isn't the case. Still it seems like they are close to having something workable here.

Heat shielding didn't look relevant at this section of the flight at all. The booster didn't have any shielding.

Nothing could have prepared me for how that catch looked. I was sure the rocket was careening into the tower at the last second before it straightened out. The control algorithms must be incredible for the landing system to work within those small tolerances.

MIMO and nonlinear control theories are probably some of the hardest topics in all of engineering. SpaceX control system also has to compensate for the fuel moving inside their rockets so the control algorithms probably involve some kind of fast numerical fluid simulation.

Another interesting thing SpaceX is doing is to use consumer-grade chips in triple redundancy configurations instead of using $100,000+ radiation-hardened aerospace/defense grade chips.

Here’s a video from a farther vantage point that gives a better perspective on the landing process:

https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1845444890764644694

That was one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

I know the control algorithms are the mind-blowing part here but,

does anyone have any literature about how the Rocket localized itself with respect to the chopstick arms? It must've been some combination of GPS and Radar pings to the arms?

And then the onboard IMU to make sure it hits it straight.

The booster was falling at 4500 Km/h 30 seconds before the catch with 2-3% fuel left. How is that amount of fuel remotely enough to stop the downward momentum?

Watched several times, amazing stuff.

Had flashbacks to playing Jupiter Landing on the C64!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Lander

Edit: SpaceX should create a simple 'catch' the rocket game. Play in browser style. Just for kicks and marketing.

Felt special witnessing history, was delighted my kids and their friends all were glued to the TV for it also.

I thought the same, screamed out "ouch that doesn't look good!" right before the catch.

The last part of the live stream they showed footage from a different angle and there it didn't look too bad though! For sure controlled.

Scott Manley put out a tweet that they went down towards a non-tower position until they were at three engine controlled burn, and only then did the side shift.

A clip from some news program popped up on YouTube, just a two minutes clip of the catch, I was convinced that it was reversed. The fact that this is possible, that they made it work is nothing short of amazing.

timestamp for "catch" is around 40:00 for those curious

Prior launch landed 0.5cm away from the target location. This is equivalent to landing a 25 story building right on the foundation.

Absolutely impressive accuracy and precision.

When Musk first proposed this, I thought he was crazy. It seemed like something a school boy would draw up. Now I think this will become routine and forgettable after a few more successes. Is there a word for that - something out of fiction becoming mundane?

There's also a very impressive sensor and actuator story.

Yes, indeed. But I will add that the sheer size of the rocket helps in this regard. I think it is rather hard to appreciate the massive scale of the feat by watching videos.

The simulation they show at 21 min into the video is almost exactly like it happend in the end, to it seems it went perfectly as planned.

Do the control algorithms use AI?

Video of the catch

> Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster!

https://x.com/spacex/status/1845442658397049011

10 minutes from 3h25m of this video shows launch and catch.

Historic viewing :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC87WmFN_As&t=3h25m14s

Naive question: I obviously expect there to be flames from the engines, but there were flames on the lower sides for quite a while after the catch – is that expected?

I wonder what will happen when they get to 99% reliability? They clean up and rebuild the Mechazilla every once a hundred catches, on that occasion that one fails?

A phone video[1] from Mexico, with nice plume refraction of the Sun.

[1] https://x.com/Cosmo_556/status/1845554958604657051

Amazing achievement.

I'm just so happy to see this level of progress. This another big step for opening up space. To think that one day this will be considered normal. 150 Metric tons sent on a fully reusable rocket.

Thats like a 747 to space.

So, reusable is supposed to reduce the cost. But the space shuttle was reusable and it has been shutdown because it was too expensive. What is the differences between the two?

Is that 150t of payload or total? What’s the cost in fuel alone (let’s ignore maintenance and operations costs for now)? I’m trying to get a feel for the relative scale compared to today’s commercial flight.

This opens up immense possibilities for exploration

Where is the progress if they're 2 years behind their schedule? In Q1 2025 they should already be launching the HLS according to the timeline.

My wife asked "Why is this a big deal?", so I gave her a link to Handmer's 2021 explanation: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st...

She's not an enthusiast; she's got an impression from SciFi that going to mars shouldn't be that hard.

Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct would have got "flags and footprints" on Mars without needing something like Starship. He worked on a version of SLS in 1989 in Martin Marietta that would have cost $1B and been ready in the second half of the 90s and would be retiring soon after many successful flight to Mars (and to the Moon), but instead we got SLS and Orion so we need Starship to get anything done.

Well I mean going to Mars isn't that hard per se, a fair few countries have done it... but carrying enough supplies and shielding to last people 2 years until the return trip and then actually getting back are way harder problems.

Seeing Starship get burnthrough on these suborbital launches really shows how hard it'll be to do Mars return entry with a fair few extra km/s.

That seems like way too long an article for a non-enthusiast.

Going to Mars is relatively easy compared to setting up a self-sustaining human civilization on Mars, which will be thousands of times harder. Many people don't understand the scale and scope of the biosphere services the Earth provides to humans free of charge, though, and forget that little of that exists on Mars, other than gravity.

It's difficult to overstate how important the milestone of catching the booster is. Now we have a reusable rocket an order of magnitude larger than anything we've had before, and the cost of kg to orbit just nosedived.

Second stage reuse seems the far more challenging problem. Other companies should have reusable boosters soon but if significant amounts of Starship continue to ablate on the way down they could be faced with a disposable Starship competing with smaller and cheaper second stages that are well sized for typical payloads. We already knew boosters can be flown back to launch sites reliably with high accuracy. We don't know if it is possible to make rapidly reusable thermal protection systems that can operate on an orbital vehicle of Starship's size until it is demonstrated.

I'm not sure how critical "catching" the booster is to reusability, but it does save weight by not needing legs for landing, and perhaps the booster suffers less stress this way?

Note that the booster is not really being "caught" although this is the word it seems we're stuck with. It's really more like landing on the arms, since it throttles to a hover at that point.

They're still having some significant burn through problems on the upper stage fins during reentry it looks like. Way better than last time but the top part of the fin was glowing far a while after the main reentry finished.

It's a game change

They're a long way from having a reusable super heavy booster. It's still copping a lot of damage on the landing.

I think that catching a grain silo in mid air that fell in a semi-controlled way from effin low earth orbit is undeniably incredible.

SpaceX continues to blow me away with these unbelievably lofty ideas. I remember seeing their "grasshopper" flights years ago and they blew it up because they couldn't land it at the time, who knew within a few years they'd be doing this.

I think they still have "Grasshopper" (the custom test unit) sat outside at McGregor, it was F9R Dev1 (a modified F9 booster) that they had to destruct after one of the engines failed mid-hop.

They were originally going to do high-altitude tests with an "F9 dev2" (similar to some of the early starship test launches) - but they gave up and just did some testing with real landing Falcon 9s instead.

Strategically this is huge for the US and NATO. Being able to put orders of magnitude more payload in orbit at a fraction of the cost of the competition is a huge advantage in controlling space. Starlink and starshield are already years ahead of what china and russia has, starship is going to widen that gap even further.

Amen! If it turns out we can’t make humans a multiplanetary species in any reasonable timeframe, at least we can make the last few decades of livable earth climate a friendly atmosphere for US business interests.

The most expensive part is to support the risk and cost of research & development. Sure, that renders you the first place for a while, but expect others to move easier (and thus faster) after you marked the trail.

Well if US would deploy global kinetic bombardment system that would def. be a game changer.

Putting zero payload into space?

Wow, I knew they were going to try to catch the booster this time but I really didn’t think it was going to work on the first try, I was just hoping they didn’t destroy the launch tower in the process. Congrats to the SpaceX team, absolutely amazing! Hope y’all are celebrating

All the renders in the world couldn't have prepared me for how crazy the actual catch looked!

ok now they have an actual reference and can animate it better haha.

That was crazy, 50% of me thought as it was coming in, especially as it pitched towards the tower, "they've overcompensated and are going to bring the whole tower down" but they absolutely nailed it.

Even without the catch step, I always feel like their boosters are coming down way too fast way too late, with engines reigniting startlingly close to surface. Never ceases to surprise me.

Yeah but they did pass some flame down much of the tower. Pretty quick though, probably just cleaned it with fire.

Yeah it definitely looked sketchy for a sec but was probably fully as intended

Although this is by far not the first landing of SpaceX boosters I've seen, this looked like scifi to me even in 2024.

What does Starship reusability mean for $/kg to LEO? I know there are longer term targets of $10/kg but that supposes efficiencies that aren’t here yet. Would be helpful to understand before Starship reusability where the state of the art was in terms of $/kg to LEO and where we would be with impending Starship reusability.

I don't think we have a number for it yet. But it will definitely be the cheapest launch system at the time of launch.

People say 200$/kg just with booster reuse, and 20$/kg with full reuse. Of course this might be too optimistic, but I truly believe we might reach under 50$ in this decade.

Everyone gets this wrong, cost is not price. SpaceX themselves launch Starlinks at about $1,200/kg but they charge customers closer to $12,000/kg. Do the math. Costs coming down are increases in SpaceX profits, not decreases in customer prices.

The dominant variable is how often they can reuse the stages. Last I heard Musk was targeting dozens of reuses for the upper stage and hundreds for the booster. If they are short of the cost per kg goes up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bgmsm9/cost_...

> What does Starship reusability mean for $/kg to LEO?

All we can say is under $1,000/kg. Which is conservative, that limit being about two thirds that of Falcon Heavy’s theoretical cost to LEO in a reüsable configuration.

Ryan Hansen had an incredible (although unofficial) 3d modeling video of the mechanism. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ub6HdADut50

The catch looks amazing, but one thing I don't understand is why SpaceX needs the technology to catch a booster they've already demonstrated the ability to land boosters on barges. Is the arm more cost effective to scale compared to a barge?

This booster is much, much larger than the Falcon 9 first stages that land on barges. It's ~70 metres high, versus ~40 metres for the Falcon 9 first stage, and weighs about 275 000 kg compared to the ~20 000 kg of the Falcon 9 first stage.

In short, it would require such huge and heavy landing legs and landing barges that it probably wouldn't be feasible.

The argument is that you don't need to spend the vehicle mass on legs, so you get performance.

On the other hand, I imagine you could wipe out any benefits to $/mass launched pretty quickly by blowing up the tower.

The landing legs are heavy. SpaceX would rather have more payload than carry legs to space on every launch.

Also landing on the launch pad means you don’t have to transport the rocket. Just have the arms set it down and you’re ready to launch again.

Maybe the goal is to refill and relaunch immediately?

Weight. Legs weigh a lot. That's dead weight for a launch system, and it serves only to reduce payload to orbit.

For Falcon 9 that's not that big a deal because they're NOT trying to reuse the second stage. Whereas with Starship they need more fuel to recover the ship, and that means they need to save weight elsewhere to avoid losing too much payload to orbit.

It takes time for the barges to return the booster to the launch pad. They want to be able to launch Starship, have the booster land back at the launch pad, have the arms set it back down on the ground, and recycle the booster for another launch in just a few hours. Then the arms can be used to stack the booster and the next payload on the launch platform.

Awesome achievement. Watched it with my sister at home and brought back memories from the 60s in front of the B&W TV watching some of the early amazing flights and landings.

Question for hackers: How does this reorient space programs world-wide? If I were a politician or technocrat in China, Russia, or the EU this would feel like an inverse and intense Sputnik moment — “holy sh—- we have to up our game!”

Eventually it convinces everybody that "quantity in space" is possible. Moving to projects where you don't have to count every ounce. It opens the path to wild schemes, in amount of weight that could be moved.

And why "eventually"? SpaceX should have already convinced people of that. Yeah it's not yet in production, but the momentum and progress have been amazing to witness.

(The previous one was convincing everyone that there was lots of space for tech improvement. Wake up call achieved just a few years ago also by SpaceX.)

In Europe, ESA has been pretty open about trying to copy and play catch-up to SpaceX:

> Q: Callisto looks very much like Grasshopper, the SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage reuse prototype.

> A: Callisto is Grasshopper. The Chinese are also building a similar prototype, I have no problem saying we didn’t invent anything.

https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of...

It doesn't. It makes one or two mega-constellations cheaper for their operators and therefor more profitable, but no one except telecom and sensor platforms really want orbit. It's useless for most things, far worse than working on the planet's surface where all the labor and materials already are.

The SpaceX engineers are incredible for being able to pull this off.

Incredible achievement, my American friends! Congrats! We, Europeans, can only feel jealous, but hey at least we have free [but comically broken and dysfunctional] healthcare, so, there's that. I hope you'll bring a lot more progress to humankind beyond space exploration!

The long-term goal is becoming a multi-planet species, so in that context it's not about countries. Go Earth!

(also, while NASA has been generally helpful to SpaceX's efforts, American FAA bureaucrats have managed to inject unnecessary delays and uncertainty into the process (in addition to some necessary delays).

When I was visiting the space center in Huntsville, Indiana, I had a chance to talk with one of the volunteers. His name was Brooks Moore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3hudRA3yL8), and he had been the director of navigation systems for the Apollo (and other) projects.

The first SpaceX barge landing had just taken place, and I asked him what he thought. He got a faraway look in his eyes, and agreed that it had been spectacular. For those guys, it must have seemed like all of their dreams were coming true.

I believe you meant Huntsville, Alabama?

SpaceX is really incredible in how regular the improvements are coming. Something in their structure is well balanced.

It has to be Elon, he is focusing a lot of energy on the company right now.

It still blows my mind how the landings are more exciting than the launches.

I'm completely mind-blown that not only can they do this, but we get 1080p video for almost the whole time.

What cameras do they have that can look at something 30 KM up in the air that well?

As in life, when a person is on a road to nowhere, it’s the homecoming that’s sweet. The only thing more exciting than an Earth landing will be a moon or Martian landing. Or the in-orbit fuel consolidation docking, if only because it will be a huge milestone.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7wFmJxJfGCN6DM5913y7pr?si=-Uo...

Can I hijack this thread for an almost completely unrelated question that I have observed in nearly every simulation of movement in space, even from sources like NASA and SpaceX which “should know better”?

And I’m mostly asking this out of scientific curiosity, not as a criticism.

Why do they always portray movement in space by showing stars moving past the view at variable rates, or even at all?

The opening screen of this video while you’re waiting for the feed to start shows stars moving that seem to be only feet away, and only a few inches in diameter. Like little orbs of light just passing outside the window.

Isn’t this highly unrealistic, for even extremely fast travel in space?

I would imagine at most you would see very slow movement of a very static field of stars. But every depiction in sci-fi, video games, and other simulations like in this video insist on making it seem like space is full of tiny 6-12” stars floating only feet away from each other.

Is there any explanation where this could actually be considered realistic that I’m not thinking of?

I’m just a lowly software engineer, so my expertise in this area is null. But from a basic understanding of stars and physics, this seems unrealistic.

Admittedly, I guess it wouldn’t be very exciting to view movement in space in a way that I’m imagining would be realistic, and maybe that’s the only explanation there is/needs to be.

But I guess I’m thinking that there would be enough people at SpaceX (for example) to scream “this is not even close to realistic!” for something like that to not make it to production, even if it is more exciting to watch.

As others have said, you're correct. But one reason for doing this, beyond just looking cool, is to give a visual cue for motion. The aim isn't primarily to look realistic, but to make it as easy as possible to interpret the outputs. Motion cues help with this.

As an example, if you're watching an airshow against a clear blue sky, especially filmed with a long lens where you can't see the ground, it is very hard to understand what's actually happening because you can only see attitude changes, but not the velocity vector. Add just a few clouds in the background and the impression is very different.

I’m guessing when making an artistic depiction of something going very fast in space, that sort of parallax helps? The goal of consumer content (including the ones by spacex) isn’t to be realistic, it’s to entertain

That said, “the expanse” is an exception here - they make it look as realistic as possible, including the battles where ships don’t even see each other. Stars barely move on it too

You're correct, it's hilariously unrealistic (IIRC requires actual superluminal speed), but people have been conditioned to accept it by various scifi media.

Imitating science fiction is great marketing for a space company.

Brand association with familiar depictions of “the future” is the goal, not realism.

> Is there any explanation where this could actually be considered realistic that I’m not thinking of?

You could record the full trip, and then speed the record up. What the point to watch at thousand years of the record with slowly changing picture, if you can watch it in a few minutes.

If they were truthful, you'd think the picture was frozen, signal issues etc.

Magnificent, it's hard to image what we'll be able to do once these do roundtrips daily. For those are not aware, that booster is 71 m (233 ft) tall!

Improvements that make space flight more sustainable are welcome ... unless that means an order of magnitude more pollution in a less controllable form, like emissions. [Due to more frequent flights]

Daily trips to space likely also mean more debris in space and falling to earth.

I hope there is a balance that includes the lives of people near these sites and all of us sharing the same atmosphere.

Closeup of chopsticks as they were catching the booster, best clip from Everyday Astronaut's livestream: https://x.com/kagurazakimoto/status/1845447451592765820

The SpaceX clip is better https://x.com/spacex/status/1845442658397049011?s=46

I'd never considered a 70m tall chunk of mostly metal "agile", but the way it's controlled into the arms so precisely is something to behold.

NSF video: https://x.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1845442658203734384

Truly incredible. A day for the history books.

> NSF is not affiliated with NASA, but the initials in the URL are used with permission from NASA.

Right on target, next to their buoy! Insane achievement!

At a buoy, SpaceX.

This got me as excited as the original Falcon 9 landing in 2016! Now I got to share this with my kids! So incredible...

I just quit my job at a SaaS. What am I doing with my life... The SpaceX team just caught the biggest rocket in history with a giant arm, we all need to dream bigger!

https://x.com/mytechceoo/status/1845573520035577925

Just to nitpick, perhaps it would be nicer to have a link that has the info visible without a login...

Random link with the actual 10 minutes of magic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b28zbsnk-48

They caught it! Holy sh*t!

Very inspiring, glad I woke up to watch it. Congratulations to the SpaceX team. This is what competition looks like. It’s funny how last decade SpaceX had to sue the government to get more launches.

California officials reject more SpaceX launches, with some citing Musk's X posts

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1845131546501734440...

Well that may still continue to happen. The wonderful and competent state of California is literally trying to block SpaceX launches over Musk’s constitutionally protected political speech:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/10/california-reject-m...

I cannot remember a more explicit case of authoritarian government abuse in a developed nation in recent memory, and it’s especially infuriating given SpaceX and Musk are one of the most important and innovative companies and leaders of all time. No other country would think to look at such accomplishments and try to undermine themselves through petty politics and lawfare.

The FAA needs more funding at this point. They're not staffed for the rate of launch requests which commercial space has grown too.

Here is Scott Manley's summary and analysis of flight 5:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ysx4t7ICO58

They have the experience and control systems to do this reliably with Falcon 9 so it seemed doable in time but seeing it on a new vehicle on the first attempt was still surprising. Really impressive engineering.

I would like to shake the hands of the steeley eyed rocket men and women who just landed a skyscraper with centimeter precision. Respect.

This one's for you. Hit it Perry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VJlHWESyLI

Update: SpaceX has set the booster back down on the launch mount and reconnected the "quick disconnect" hoses that fill it with propellant before launch. If they refilled it with propellant they'd be close to launching it again! Presumably they will be draining it instead.

Apparently the rails that catch the booster can translate in and out relative to the "chopstick" arms so the booster can be positioned and rotated to match the launch mount after landing.

This is a very important update. Where would we find out more about this? Was this in a YouTube video somewhere?

I wonder if they recover the helium used to pressurize the propellant tanks.

Giddy and crying.

I turned 50 yesterday and it feels a bit like the future I dreamed of as a child.

I also cried watching this

This made me happy

And here I thought nothing would top the double landing view from Falcon Heavy...

That was such a magical moment

anybody not watching these live better be delivering a baby,or saving someones life its a very short list of things that should take precidence over what are the most astounding things happening for our species,ever

SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have already revolutionized the space industry with their reusable first stage boosters and rocket engines. This advance in rocket design has resulted in the cost to launch one kilogram of payload to orbit from approximately $15,000 in the pre-SpaceX era, to around $1,400 with the Falcon Heavy. This graph shows the incredible impact of SpaceX on the volume of rocket launches, with an exponential rise in recent years:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...

With Starship, SpaceX is striving to make rockets fully reusable, which, if they succeed, will transform human civilization by radically reducing launch costs and enabling large-scale space exploration and industry. The kinds of possibilities this opens up include economically viable permanent lunar bases, Mars colonization, and revolutionary industries like asteroid mining.

Moon by 2030 and Mars by 2040 seems like a winning bet lately

The Delta-V is comparable since you can aerobrake on mars. It's only the difference between the time.

Earth to moon without Aerobraking is a delta v of around 13k/s, mars is 13.3

NSF video: https://x.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1845442658203734384

Coolest video by far, but this still places 3rd for me behind F9’s first landing, and the dual heavy landing. The future is bright!

"Incredible!" in the voice of my 3 year old who just saw it :)

What is the object beside the rocket at 37:49 to 38:02 ? Is that debris ? It seems to be falling with, then away from the rocket. (it looks like a small glowing ring to the right)

It’s the hot staging spacing ring. They didn’t call it on the feed but it is an expendable part that ejects after separation.

What an incredible achievement. Huge congratulations to the team at SpaceX! Still have chills.

Anyone know whether the fire toward the bottom of the booster during/after the catch is normal?

I suppose they were venting off and burning some remaining fuel in some conduits.

We live in a day and age where it seems that all the innovations we see now are new tech that has to do with electronics.

Good to see some good ol hardware breakthroughs in another industry.

The engineers at spaceX are amazing, and I'll admit I envy their tenacity and genius.

The amount of progress we have seen in rocketry and space travel in the last decade is mind blowing, I never thought I would see this in my lifetime.

Edit: Decided to give it a shot and applied for a backend software engineering position at SpaceX. I'm not sure if it will be noticed, but its worth a shot. I may not be a rocket scientist, but it would be great to contribute using the knowledge I do have.

We could have had this all along.

When KSP becomes reality, 275 tons falling from space caught by some metal struts…

Everyday Astronaut Stream: https://youtu.be/pIKI7y3DTXk

People on earth are experiencing the Jetsons and the Flinstones at the same time

Food for thought:

Maybe 'the Jetsons' and 'the Flintstones' aren't as far apart as we think, us being people who like to think we are witnessing 'the Jetsons' now. Maybe that is just a relevant distinction.

Maybe those two descriptors are much closer than they would appear to some outside observers. Maybe it's really just 'Flintstones part 1;' and 'Flintstones part 2', right now.

Or...

Our 'Flintstones' was already 'Jetsons' compared to everything else in this observable universe, which winds up mostly being just peat bogs on Dagobah, comparatively, and we're just inching out the icing on the cake at this point.

Who knows.

This is what makes it bittersweet. So many comments here talking about this being progress for 'humanity'. I may be cynical, but most of humanity will get no benefit from any of these accomplishments. This is technology owned by and ultimately in service of a minuscule fraction of humanity.

Ok. I will admit this. SpaceX Engineering is making me feel regret for not choosing Aerospace Engineering back in Undergrad. Oh well, That Tower is almost within Civil-Structural Engineering.

During/before the water landing of Ship, the telemetry indication for the rocket motors stayed off.

Does that mean the landing burn was unsuccessful? Or was that just a glitch in the telemetry?

In the video you can see the engines light (reflecting off the metal control flap and water) and the ship make a soft touchdown on the water. It then tips over and the tanks pop from the force of smacking the water sideways.

So the landing burn seems to have been a success.

It's weird, that happened last time too so you'd think if it was a glitch they would have fixed it.

Damn what a time to be alive! Amazing

Couldn't watch the livestream on X because it was erroring out. We live in a world where you can't stream a video or Chromecast on X but you can catch a damn rocket...

I wouldn't bother with X. There were dozens of YouTube channels with the live feed.

X has proven time and time again that it just cannot handle live feeds well.

SpaceX has done it again! (defying status quo, not the catch :p)

Imagine the number of amazing space telescopes that we are going to get! When it's cheep to launch a 10m diameter object into space, so many possibilites open up.

For things like that, they could build special versions of the star ship which remain in orbit as the housing. They would need no flaps, no tiles, just the 6 engines and the fuel tank. The body of the starship itself would be the telescopes tube.

One of the biggest steps forward in the space industry since the first landing of Falcon 9.

Great success!!

Happy Birthday! SpaceX lit a mighty big candle for you :)

Based on this conversation, how many of y'all are actual rocket scientists? I'm blown away by the expertise in some of these comments

And here I was blown away by the ignorance of many of the questions. Why no landing legs? Why is this more impressive than the other rocket landings? What’s the thingy that fell off during separation? Sometimes I need to remind myself that other people have lives, I guess. XD

Does anyone know what this circular thing is at 5:36 mark in the below video under the booster? It's like a piece which separated and keeps falling off.

https://i.imgur.com/z6PH2Jw.png

https://youtu.be/b28zbsnk-48?t=336

Can someone explain to me why this is more impressive than landing the rocket? To a layman like me, it looks very similar - the thing looks just like a rocket but without a pointy tip, and on the way down I don't understand why difference that matters.

(I mean I still think it's mind blowing, because I think landing a rocket is also mind blowing)

(1) Much larger than any previous rocket landing, (2) This rocket carried no landing gear (more efficient - landing gear is heavy), (3) This rocket landed right back at the place it needs to be to launch again - right on its launch tower - which in a routine situation might make it much faster to prepare it for the next relaunch. (4) It's yet another step in control prowess - impressive in itself.

It is a rocket. The biggest difference with the Falcon 9 first stage is that this one is about 6 times as big (diameter of 9m vs 3.7m), and that catching it with the tower requires a much higher precision in landing location. The drone ships that Falcon 9 lands on are about 90 x 50 meter. To catch it with the tower, they need to be accurate to within a few meters.

The big advantage of catching it with the tower is that it'll (eventually) allow them to put another Starship on top, refuel and launch again within hours, as opposed to the weeks it currently takes for Falcon 9.

The tower is also how they plan to perform maintenance and re-staging for another launch. The tower can place it back on the launch structure or lower it down to the ground if it needs to be transported back to an enclosure for extensive repairs but a lot of work is just done with it at the tower. I imagine the goal is to eventually get to an automated system that catches the booster, inspects it for damage, clears it for relaunch, positions it on the launch structure, grabs another Sharship second stage and stacks it and then refuels the whole system and launches as soon as possible.

Plus it's really big https://images-bonnier.imgix.net/files/ill/production/Starsh...

This booster is significantly larger than anything landed on an orbital launch before. Here is a size comparison, previous largest landed orbital rocket stage is the SpaceX Falcon 9 (three of them launch together as Falcon Heavy) on the left. Starship is on the right.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/SuperHea...

Landing via tower catch versus on a pad is advantageous because the weight of adding retractable landing legs to such a large rocket would be significant.

This method doesn't require landing legs on the rocket, allowing their weight to be used for payload instead

From what I understand, it reduces the turnover dramatically. In theory the booster should be refuelled, new second stage mounted on top and ready to go for another flight. So could cut down from weeks to days/hours. That's significant.

It's more precise than landing on the ground, there is coordination with the tower required, it is way bigger than Falcon 9.

This video goes into details pretty well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OYvWYp0--bQ&t=832s

I think landing a booster is just as impressive. It's just that nobody's done this before, so it's exciting! Plus it's a lot bigger and part of a fully reusable config which has huge implications for space travel.

This one seems way harder than the others which land on legs and on a relatively larger circular landing pad, this one needs to nail the tower and its arms.

Stage 1 sucessfully caught. That was pretty incredible. I remember watching the Falcony Heavy launch when both boosters landed in sync.

It's hanging pretty high in the air, I assume so the engines do less damage to the pad. One wonders how they're going to get it down. Do the chopsticks lower on the tower?

They'll lower it to the launch mount... the catch arms are effectively a crane. But I wonder if it's more "toasty" than they were expecting? There were some fires going at catch (those look out, at least on external camera views) and the engines are still a bit.... smokey. Don't know if that's normal... or if they were expecting it.

My hunch is that they don't put it down for awhile. If there's still an issue were there are fires lingering inside, my hunch is they want that as far from the ground infrastructure as possible.

Either way incredible progress.

Yes, the chopsticks lower and raise. They will lower the tower onto a transport vehicle and send it back to the bay for examination, and then possible reflight.

Yep, they handle all the mounting/demounting ops on the launch mount, so they have to be able to move along the tower.

Yes, the chopsticks are attached to one giant lift.

Amazing achievement, but also reminds me that what NASA and its contractors accomplished during the 1960s still stands with current day systems engineering.

The 3rd Saturn V launch put three men into orbit around the Moon. The 6th landed two of them there.

THEY REALLY CAUGHT IT!

Seems impossible honestly. Like the Jetsons

Wow, that’s amazing. Didn’t think something like that would be possible.

This chopstick catch was really impressive. I had my money on them managing it the first time. I haven't been so excited since the dual landing of their Falcon 9 boosters.

This was insanely cool to watch. And on the first try!

As a complete lay person with little to no physics knowledge: what stops the use of something dumb like a parachute, or even wings and landing gear, to "land" the booster? I assume it is impractical (since they don't do it), but what are the actual particulars that stop it from working? While super cool to watch, it seems crazy that plucking it out of the air like that is the best way to preserve the booster for reuse.

Parachutes give little or no control over where and how the rocket lands, are unreliable (unfurling fabric behaves chaotically; modern spacecraft still don't have 100% reliability on their parachutes), and are surprisingly heavy.

Wings and landing gear are useless extra weight during launch, and excess weight on the booster has a super-linear reduction weight delivered to orbit. (the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation)

During the 1960s, NASA investigated using inflatable Rogallo Wings (basically hang gliders) to land the Gemini capsule. It worked fine, but was more complicated than parachutes, and re-use was not one of the goals of the Gemini or Apollo programs.

None of those give much margin for error on landing. Without any kind of propulsion, there's no option to come to a hover or do another go-around if the landing isn't going well. Space Shuttle pilots had to do extensive training in simulators for the landing because they only got one shot at it during the mission.

Propulsive landing doesn't require any hardware that isn't already on the launch vehicle, only a little excess propellant. (And it is a small amount; Super Heavy is like a soda can that's full of liquid at launch and only has a swig at the bottom during landing.) Propulsive landing gives Falcon 9 and Super Heavy the ability to overcome wind and other weather conditions to make pinpoint landings. Engine throttling gives Super Heavy the ability to hover, so it has a huge margin for error when coming in for a landing.

Super Heavy could have had legs, like Falcon 9, but it has such a huge payload capacity that they can simply choose to always launch with enough propellant to come back to the tower, and it saves a lot of flying weight and complexity by simply not having them. The arms on the tower can be massively overbuilt to ensure however much reliability SpaceX wants.

> As a complete lay person with little to no physics knowledge: what stops the use of something dumb like a parachute, or even wings and landing gear, to "land" the booster?

The main advantage is that you don't need to spend any of your payload mass budget on a parachute, or wings and landing gear. The secondary advantage over a parachute is that you don't need to fish it out of seawater and make your refurbishment process more of a pain in the ass.

At the very least, reducing the number of concerns on the rocket is definitely worthwhile. They are going to have an engine in any case, and using just that and nothing else on the rocket itself simplifies testing and reduces risk. The tower can have a separate testing and there's no way something that happens on the way to orbit and back breaks the tower.

Wings, parachute, etc... All very easy to break or burn at hypersonic speeds, and very chaotic to control. It probably (very probably) wouldn't be possible to land back exactly where the rocket launched on wings or chutes - that would probably need an extremely long and wide runway, but compare the size of Starship to the Space Shuttle... It's like braking a toy car vs braking an actual truck.

It mostly comes down to reducing extra weight. You have to carry those wings and landing gear upwards, which reduces useful payload weight. But having the booster right where it started also helps with reusability. No need to transport the booster from a landing strip back to the starting table

physics?

Does anyone know of a live map where we can see the trajectory of launches? Wondering if starship went above my head during reentry, but I can't find the info

The video looks like it's being played in reverse

Another great view: https://youtu.be/Vzyaud250Xo

This is truly an amazing feat! Congratulations to the SpaceX team.

Can someone explain to me exactly WHY it's such a big deal though? Like subjectively I can see it's incredible but while watching the video there were enormous applauses at points I knew were a big deal but I lacked the understanding of physics to truly appreciate.

The current Falcon rocket always expends a stage and lands a stage. Starship will land both stages. Also Starship is far larger and in rocketry there is something called the square cube law that means bigger is better. So its far more efficient. That leads to far cheaper mass to orbit costs.

For humans to have any reasonable presence somewhere else in our solar system (moon, mars, etc.) we need the ability to launch tons (literally tons) of stuff to orbit and to the destination. and we need to launch it often to do anything in a reasonable amount of time. the only way to do that is to make reusable launch systems. SpaceX's Falcon 9 has aced that for satellites (see Starlink and everything else they've launched). The Starship launch system is capable of launching a significantly larger payload, ~20 times more. What they demonstrated yesterday is that a launch system that is capable of getting us anywhere in the solar system can be reusable. Huge accomplishment.

Question I can't find the answer to anywhere: considering that SpaceX already had other ways of re-using boosters, why are they doing this?

Is it to explore more options? Or because it's faster to re-use the booster if it's already in place? Were the other approaches not satisfactory, perhaps? Or no longer applicable due to size?

First because the rocket is lighter without landing legs. Second because they're aiming for rapid reusability, they want to tower to catch the rocket, lower it to the launch mount, and get another Starship stacked on it.

mass that's on the tower that was moved to the rocket is no longer on the rocket, which means the rocket can carry more fuel/payload. hence the tower catching the rocket instead of the rocket having heavy landing gear.

Anyone knows how the landing is guided? Is it just really precise GPS/altimeter or does it use computer vision?

Falcon-9 relies on GPS and a couple of altimeters. (Filtered, as others have already said, with the help of data from the inertial sensors.)

Compared to Falcon-9, Starship/Superheavy additionally has a command link from the ground. Whether it is used to coordinate the movement during the catch is not publicly known, but it is easy to imagine how this could be useful.

Likely a mix of GPS, inertial guidance, vision and radio/laser beacons/ranging.

I'd imagine a combination of inertial and GPS, combined with a Kalman filter. Inertial handles short term estimation; GPS correcting drift in the inertial system. But they could roll in other information sources at the end.

I would bet in the traditional sensors.

This is why Musk is silly when he claims fear over what certain possible gov administrations would do to him if elected.

He's allowed to believe whatever he wants. He's too valuable to the United States. Imagine what a BRICS country would pay for his talent? Worth his weight in gold wrapped platinum.

It’s justified. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-11/la-me-sp...

Congratulations. This is a Sputnik-level event, opening a new era in the history of civilization. Amazing.

Sorry for the newbie rocket question: Blast off happens around 33:00 in that video. The rocket appears to be vertically still (does not move) for the first 4 to 4.5 seconds. Is it held in place, or are not enough engines burning (yet) to induce take-off?

While I cannot say if it moves immediately, it definitely moves within 2 seconds. It does not appear to move because it is so massive at more than 100 meters.

Holy hell, they caught the booster!

Landing from space during sunrise while your rocket is on fire is as dramatic as it gets!

Nothing short of inspiring. Moving humanity forward. Well done to the SpaceX team.

What parts of this can be reused? I bet the engine is OK, but seems like the sides of the ... tube ... were pretty roughed up. I guess that's probably the cheapest part of the assembly though.

All of it can be reused. Their plan is for the tower to set the booster back down and immediately relaunch it.

Everything except the stage connector ring (which uses pyro bolts I believe) should be directly reusable, after an inspection, light brushing, and refueling / recharging.

Maybe the bottom uses some ablative material, then a new coat of it needs to be applied / attached.

All the internals should have enough resource for likely dozens of launches, if Falcon-9 is any indication.

Highlights in a YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/b28zbsnk-48?si=JamDRMuN07oWlcZi

Do they recover whats left of the ship from the Indian Ocean?

They can probably go fishing, but anything that sunk is gonna stay sunk. That ocean is not shallow, and deep submarine operations are expensive…

Great launch! Would be nice if the starship itself would be landing on the chopsticks next time and land during day time instead of dark Australia.

Does each engine have 6 degree of freedom to point its jet?

No, each individual engine has 2 DoF (x-axis and y-axis rotation) which correspond to torque on x and y plane to the rocket. They need to use more than one at once (three in starship's case) pointing in different directions to get z axis torque.

Absolutely incredible achievement, I'm still shaking!

So funny that they had a little buoy water ready to film the explosion. I want to see the views of that camera from the landing itself.

The contrast between SpaceX's success at creating reusable rockets and Tesla's failure at FSD is pretty stark.

To be honest FSD is way harder. The platform doesn't occasionally have a road closure sign or a new traffic light or a guy unloading his van or an emergency vehicle with its hazards on.

Don't get me wrong the engineering and physics are crazy ugly, but it's at least consistent within a range. Humans are messy, unpredictable, unreliable and chaotic.

After watching this the project of changing brakes on my old car doesn't feel like that big of a project anymore.

I was sure they were going to lose one of the fins at "max q part 2".. Looked like it burned through near the hinge.

If anything, the last 2 flights have shown how good a decisions it was to go with steel. The thermal reserves seem to be really large. While not as bad as with the previous flight, there was still significant leakage of hot air between the starhip and the flap. But it didn't seem to cause significant damage, at least as far as for the landing. For complete reuse, they probably have to still improve that a bit.

As an ME/AE, I can say this is an astounding engineering achievement. And on the first try! Well done, SpaceX!

Congratulations to those working at SpaceX!

Do we know how much more efficient/cheaper landing by booster catch is compared to landing on a platform?

It's not just cheaper, it's preserving capacity. Every pound of landing gear you carry has to be offset with fuel to lift it, and then that fuel has to have fuel to lift it and on and on.

In addition to the other ways this is incredible, it is a stunning achievement in software development.

First attempt!

I can't believe what i just saw!

Humanity has reached a milestone.

An incredible achievement. I'm honored to be part of this moment in history.

Why can only Elon do stuff like this and not BlueOrigin or the hundreds of other aerospace startups? Does he just have a 1/100000000 combination of intelligence, tenacity, and directionality that can't be matched by anyone, even those trying to emulate him as closely as possible?

Isn't BlueOrigin going after at totally different market segment, I thought it was focused on things like space tourism and more "space base" type stuff? Also pretty sure BlueOrigin is almost all funded by Jeff B, SpaceX has a lot of external funding and focused on tangible markets vs just "people will want to do stuff in space" - I think it was only very recently they started to work with NASA.

The catch somehow absolutely demolished the amazing FH dual landing

Holy shit. I almost had a heart attack when it looked like the booster was about to slowly careen into the tower

What is the advantage of catching the booster vs letting it touch down?

basically they transfer equipment from the rocket to the landing tower so that the rocket can be lighter which is why they have to catch the rocket instead of the rocket landing by itself.

I grew up playing Halo, and this was purely fiction at that point.

The joy on the faces of all the employees is infectious, congrats!

Unbelievable. Amazing.

I am absolutely flabbergasted at this. Wow. Jesus christ.

This is amazing. What an incredible technological feat!

We have done much, but there is much to be done.

I don’t understand, the starship has to stand on something, and what ever that is in contact with ( arm or barge or land or whatever ) , needs to be as heavy, how they are saving weight ?

This is incredible!

Very difficult to enjoy with all the screaming

Congratulations.

Do we know if there was a test payload?

What an inspiring team SpaceX has.

yea this seemed like simple PID control to me, nothing impressive yawn

That was craaaaaaaazy!

Code name: Danielsan.

That was impressive.

That was soooo good!

Now go back 7 years and watch the proposal for 1 hour flight anywhere in the world - https://youtu.be/2tf2KpCG2fM?si=EfDUcL4x7MpGt51C&t=27

Awesome. Incredible. Inspiring. Words fail me.

Heartfelt congratulations to the folks at SpaceX!

I went to follow this on the SpaceX YouTube channel since it is usually closer to real time.

It seems someone hijacked and played a video of the previous launch. Just as we got to launch time it cut to a fake badly dubbed speech by Elon Musk going on about Bitcoin, with a handy QR code.

This was a bit confusing but since it was 10 minutes in advance I managed to switch to another channel.

Still amazing, even if the video glitched at the key capture point.

And an hour later the Starship itself re entered to soft salty sea landing.

I don’t know how many prototype runs they need to do, I’m guessing they could stuff a shed load of Starlinks into the next one.

They did it!

the starship hit the target!

Crazy that the chop stick catch was originally eye rolled by the engineers and then when he pushed for it they realized he was serious.

SpaceX has unbaked bread

Now we have no excuses

Speaking as a non-American. SpaceX just made one of the most significant technological leaps in the last decade. This is obviously hugely significant in many ways, including retaining the US military edge.

Yet the US administration hasn't congratulated SpaceX. Incredible.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." and what we have witnessed is magic.

I was watching a youtube stream with tens of thousands of viewers and 20 seconds before launch it switched to an AI generated video of Elon on stage talking about his "crypto currency program". It was so well executed and generated, it nearly felt real.

The violent anger I felt and still feel for scammers has ruined my day.

At this point I am finding it hard to hate Elon Musk.

For everything he does that has annoyed me (like Gloating at people being bombed in the middle east) — his business acumen has completely unlocked for people what they we thought was impossible.

Amazing days ahead of us - if we can avoid blowing ourselves up over pathetic patches of land, we could have the entire solar system under our feet...

[stub for offtopicness]

The SpaceX engineers did a great job, as did NASA.

The media needs to stop blindly attributing this to "Elon Musk". He did well taking the risks NASA was not allowed to take at the start. But these days he is toxic to the media and toxic to reporting, so for that reason alone the media could smarted up a little. Well done SpaceX and NASA engineers.

Imagine not being Team Elon.

Would this get the “Elon musk is not very bright because I don’t like his politics” crowd to finally STFU? Rhetorical question, of course not.

Uuuh the first stream on YouTube was Musk giving a speech, so I was waiting for the launch but turns out it was on another stream? So I just missed the whole thing, great.

I still think the Space Shuttle was more impressive.

If twitter is x, does that mean spacex is space twitter? Twitter was rebranded after elon bought it.

What does this mean for the Kessler syndrome? Does reusable rockets speed up our potential for lock-in or slow it down?

Why don't they mount moving video cameras? I mean, the second part of the fly is pretty boring. They shows us a view from 2 static cameras. Is it so difficult to make one camera moving? With 360 degrees view. Show us the shape of the earth the full circle, show us the moon. Is it so hard?

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