Starship reentry and landing, 13 October 2024 

Probably sometime next year we will see SpaceX try and catch starship as well

Probably FTS activated to ensure no useable pieces are available, or a hazard to marine wildlife. A rocket letting go may hurt some plankton, but not much else.

SpaceX has never mentioned a plan to recover it, because it is incredibly unlikely to survive a splashdown. If it was intact, they would probably have to figure out a way to destroy it. There would be no way to 'safe the rocket' and therefore no one would be allowed near it, or it near any port.

No, they knew this would happen…it was planned.

We?

And why is that superior to the philosophy of "make sure it works right the first time?"

If I treated my software development that way I'd get my walking papers!

Money is the answer

​@stargazer7644 look at nasa and you can see why

​@stargazer7644 all real progress requires mistakes. Sometimes you just gotta try it

It is. This isnt the 50s when you had to recover the craft to learn anything.

@@grib695 The flight termination system was triggered. They don't want it bobbing in the ocean like a cork still carrying the potential to explode, either from the pressure contained within its tanks, or from an ignition of their contents. For SpaceX, the mission ended the moment the engines were cut and the rocket touched the water. The FTS did it job here.

It explode and was damaged, I dont know why the crowd got excited after that.

@@JnSobre I think explosion on purpose to avoid others from getting hardware. 😉

@@GreenTechElectronics It isn't on purpose, but it is 100% expected. This is called a splashdown. It proves you could land it, but without a way to catch it, it will teeter over and explode. I boggles my mind that some people think it should bob around like a 100 ton coke bottle.

​@@JnSobre just can't give credit where it's due, can you. You must be an ex-employee of Twitter or something.

@@JnSobreis everything okay at home?

I would think until they feel confident with re-entry

I think it was a bouey. I think that's how you spell it

​@@Froke415buoy

These flights are all about data gathering. For instance, validation of aerodynamic simulations. Compare the development of the return and land capability of the Falcon 9 first stage. Prior to the first attempt at landing on a drone ship there were multiple flights where the first stage would return to near the coast, and then the first stage was slowed down and directed/programmed to descend into the water at a precise GPS coordinates. Once they had that capability dialed in they moved to landing attempts on the drone ship. Starship has to do something way more difficult than what the Falcon 9 first stage does. Starship has to re-enter the atmosphere coming in with orbital velocity. At this stage SpaceX executes that re-entry at a point of the trajectory such that if starship breaks apart the pieces will still all end up falling into ocean. Whatever happens, starship debris should not fall on land. At this stage SpaceX is verifying that Starship can make a controlled descent to a precise location, in preparation of future landing attempts. It is only when SpaceX is has achieved high probablity that the re-entry will be succesful that they can move to re-entry at a point in the orbit such that starship can proceed to a landing attempt. At this stage of development: the value of the test flight is in the amount of data that is obtained.

@@cleon_teunissen thank you for your your knowledge was there not even an attempt to land it though? I understand where the focus needs to be. Maybe I'm just ignorant. But it seems like I would want to put it in the plan, even if I knew it was going to fail.

@@thehubrisoftheunivris2432they did land it. Right in the water where they wanted to.

​@@thehubrisoftheunivris2432 they now know that it can survive re-entry and arrive at a designated target so now is the time for actual landing tech to be explored. no sense wasting $$$ in R&D on the next stage just yet

@@isCUN7 thank you

Buoy, but yeah, very accurate

@@GrapeFlavoredAntifreeze but? A buoy shows even better accuracy cause it can't be moved like a boat.

@@joeskis Exactly, I’m not arguing that, I’m just clarifying that its a buoy not a boat, you can’t have a boat that close

Musk only pays for stuff. The engineers are the real heroes.

Yes, but it wasn't designed to land in water.

@@stargazer7644 thanks

You know how large it is?

cuz it is looks cool! And probably it's not important since, there is no task to catched it in IFT-5

Because explosions are awesome

Three reasons. Because the explosion is expected. The rocket lands in the water. Even if everything goes perfectly the rocket will tip over because of that. A 50 meter high rocket tipping over is likely to end in an explosion. So there's basically no way that these starship flights do not end in an explosion. The rocket survived launch, reentry and bellyflopping, which is awesome. And it looks cool.

Its a starship, not a submarine.

Bruh, IT LANDED IN THE WATER, ITS JET FUEL,..... What do you expect?

@@indevibe I expect they redesign it so it wont explode next time leaving the starship unusable.

In no wold, is a ship that size going to survive a splashdown. SpaceX doesn't expect it to survive, NASA doesn't expect it to survive, the FAA doesn't expect it to survive. It has absolutely nothing to do with the success or failure of the flight.

@@JnSobre they dont have to redesign it to land in water. Its not a submarine. They just have to land it on land.....hence the word "landing"

It isn't intended to land in the water.

It doesn't matter they got the data they it's intended to land in one piecd

The plan was (is) to "touch down" vertically at slow rate of descent as a proof of concept for future landings on a solid surface. It was ALWAYS going to suffer a "Rapid (but expected) disassembly" as red hot motors and rocket fuel contacted water. . (Duh?)

It tipped over which ruptured the fuel tanks

They recover almost everything, relax. The whales aren't in danger.

?????????? The scale of the ocean vs available land means more pollution to 'clean up' landing on land. Dumb. learn critical thinking

or build a second mecazilla. i'm sure they find a country.

@kyemin5802 They attempt to recover some of it. Most of it is actually still in the ocean, at least super heavys. If they picked a spot on land, since they have enough precision to pick a spot, they would recover all of it? It's a waste is all

They recover the entire thing. Much easier in the water.

I didn't know Jets were powered by pure methane.

It doesn't use jet fuel.

@@carcinogen60yearsago it purifies the water?

Starship is fueled by a mixture of methane and liquid oxygen.

@@DanielCook-h6r Both are gasses, so no pollution of the ocean water.

ah, so you've got some degrees that help with this assessment we can presume?

@@thebudhole8885 It's technically impressive but they want to put men on it and it doesn't have any viable abort mode. That's almost shuttle level death trap by itself.

I'm sure your elementary school qualification helped you think about this

You've obviously never heard of iterative design.

I find it amazing that people don't understand how private companies operate. Don't worry @andylem, your welfare checks are safe.