Not only is it the largest booster rocket ever flown but now SpaceX has a completely intact example that has flown an entire launch cycle. They can examine everything from metal fatigue to o-ring wear and all of the bearings on the vehicle.
It’s unreal, then you remember that their trajectory control has been low key 25th century worthy since the early days of F9, even. They’re just flexing muscles we’ve forgotten were there this whole time.
And beyond that, I don’t think people realize that these vehicles will eventually make us multi planetary. These are significant achievements in human history.
Nah, you're not old unless you saw all of the Gemini AND Apollo missions. My mom took me out one night when I was a kid and pointed to a moving light in the sky and said that was the Sputnik going overhead. She was wrong, and it was Echo 2 or something like that, but at least she tried.
@@willrsan before the pins the grid fins were used to catch and hold superheavy, im sure they could but not for long time and without damages, like i said they could be used in a emergency
Even the wildest dreams of the Apollo era didn’t have a 150m tall robot plucking a falling 22-storey skyscraper out of the air as though it were a feather.
I am completely amazed with the performance of this flight. I think we've entered a new phase in spacecraft design and capabilities. The future seems very exciting. Great video
I think its incredible how both starships can survive re-entry even with a damaged heat shield and partially burning up, i think this demonstrates how much better the stainless steel is over aluminium that the shuttle used.
And much better than the carbon fibre they were intending to use! I remember a lot of people mocking them for choosing yee old stainless steel rather than 'futuristic' carbon composites!
@@okirooju3787 IKR, crew would have likely survived on these last two landings if they were caught by the launch tower, the explosion likely only happened on impact with the ocean, same couldn't have been said for columbia.
About 2 decades for most, the only one I feel is a decade behind is China, as they are close to getting a working Falcon 9 prototype copy, but Falcon 9 is a Decade behind Starship. Other than that the only other companies I think stand a chance of surviving Starship is Rocket Lab and Stoke. And that's because they aren't actually competing with starship, and instead are aiming to make fully re-usable vehicles for smaller payloads, they're more competing with falcon 9, which if they solve full re-usability, will be possible. whereas Starship will still monopolize the large and medium payload launch market. Everyone other than those 3 are likely going to be out of the launch market entirely or for the next 2 decades while they try to develop something that can compete with Starship. If New Glenn is successful in re-using its first stage, they may only be a decade behind as they have to completely re-develop their second stage architecture to be fully re-usable, whether they can survive that re-development depends on if customers are willing to pay the premium for the same capability (obviously not), the US government artificially backs them because they don't want SpaceX to have a monopoly (possible) or if they can get enough capital to take on losses and massive R&D costs for the decade that they will be losing out to SpaceX (possible as people will see the massive success SpaceX will be profiting from and want a piece of that pie), and all that is contingent on SpaceX not making progress or innovation over that decade which obviously seems unlikely.
Credit to Elon Musk for having the vision Credit to SpaceX team for the execution! I know there are a lot of great minds in the industry but I think SpaceX's edge is their willingness to take massive risks to their infrastructure. For the channel: I really hope you can improve on the voiceover. 2nd time commenting this. I really honestly love your content. No BS, no speculation no hype. It's just the monotonous voiceover. If that's really what you're going for, then maybe I'll just turn on captions. Once again, please take this constructively. Thanks and keep up the good work.
@@evankealthere's been plenty of backlash every time something exploded (even completely expendable test articles). The difference is they just don't care, because they don't need the average voter's approval.
The one thing that Musk brought to the rocket industry is the will (and the money) to accept that things were going to blow up (a lot) and just instrument the hell out of them to find out why, instead of spending more and more money on outdated ideas in the hopes that nothing will kersplode.
Just as a BTW comment..The flames coming from the side of the rocket was something expected as SpaceX was venting out unused methane gas..It WAS an incredible achievement nonetheless! Huge KUDOS to SpaceX engineers!!
Though that seems plausible and I would like that to be true, I've been looking for an official source that confirms the fire was due to intentional venting. Can you provide your source?
Can't find an official statement on this.. So unless you got a source for what you said then it just looks like you just made up what you wanted to be true.
Another reason orientation of the booster matters, besides making sure the pins land on the rails, is the quick disconnect. They don’t want to have to remove the booster from the OLM, rotate it 180 degrees, and put it back.
Given the fact that the outer engines were not being chilled or the nozzles being regeneratively cooled during the decent and subsequent landing burn, it’s safe to say that they experienced higher heating than normal, which in addition to the atmospheric pressure, is likely the cause of the warping of the nozzles. I expect to see the outer engines being chilled during reentry and landing on the next flight.
Amazing, simply Amazing….! As a kid, I watched John Glenn and all the Mercury, and Apollo missions. Watched in 1969 Neil Armstrong land on the moon, the first Shuttle, and all the bad things too.. Space Ex is doing some absolutely amazing and unheard of things. This is truly Science Fiction coming of age…..! Very very cool…..!
I remember John Glenn's flight on Friendship 7. I also remember that monkey that got sent up and so on back to the Echo satellites. It's been a hell of a trip so far! I'm hoping we get someone at least in orbit of Mars before I have to punch my final ticket!
@@appliedfacts It's right in the radiation zone of jupiter. Like our Van allen belts. But deadlier to humans and electronics. And so they can only clip in and out of it . hence the name Europa clipper.It's gonna zip past 49 times sampling the place with radars and all sorts.
It's really big. This is one of the advantages of everything being so big. 3m accuracy looks quite inaccurate for a F9 landing, but between the movement in the arms and the scale of the booster, is absolutely fine here. Just because it is bigger doesn't mean 1m accuracy is harder, but it does mean that the same accuracy looks much more precise compared to vehicle scale. Those pins look about 50cm long. It's one of the advantages spaceX have in not having shareholders to impress. When faced with a problem that doesn't have a clever shareholder impressing solution, they don't have to care that the solution is crude. 'Just make it bigger' seems to solve a whole heap of problems!
I don't think water can suppress a fire created by rocket fuel. Water has no effect on fires created with jet fuel. The water daily leach system is pad protection from the force of the engines on the concrete.
Incase of a crash, water does very little for you. It's not solid material burning, it's a gas. The water deluge ensures that the concrete around and the steel plate do not experience excess concentrated high temperature as that would warp the plate or crack the concrete
@@jamesbarnesii4124 I'll have to think about your point some more. It still seems intended to reduce damage to the area if the catch didn't go as planned. It is an interesting topic.
@@jamesbarnesii4124 Starship doesn't use jet fuel. It's liquid methane... Water could help to save some ground equipment from heat damage in the case of mishap.
I can’t remember any sci fi that anticipated this launch and retrieval system. Imagine a spaceport with a dozen of these things going. Launch stages dropping down, upper stages trundling along or waiting to be lifted up, arms dismounting launch stages or lifting upper stages, passenger and cargo terminals linked to the towers.
Actually, in the earlier days of scifi they spent a lot of time on the mechanics of takeoff, orbiting, and landing. Today, the space vehicles in scifi are just cars.
@@Quakeboy02 - not this exact, very mechanical, system though. I'm not old enough to remember the pulp magazines, but I cut my teeth on Heinlein, Vance, Clark, Dick, Pohl, Herbert, that generation.
@@FlyxPat I was in LA about 25 years ago and walked into a book store in some back alley and they had a bunch of pulps for sale. Stupid me didn't just buy them all, and picked out 7 of them with such stories as "The Year of the Jackpot" by Heinlein, and best of all "Weyr Search" by Anne McCaffery. :)
How does it land like that like a gentle baby? I have watched this so many times...and I am still astonished. Way to go, SpaceEx team! You did so awesome 👌 So proud 🎉🎉🎉
Think of it as using the variable thrust from the rocket engines like a helicopter uses its rotary wings to land. If you look carefully, you can see the rocket exhaust moving around to position the booster in the chopsticks.
The fire on the side of the booster was intentional. Propellants were being released through the quick disconnect ports, which quickly ignited and burned. Normally, during a test fire, the exact same thing is done, except the propellants are returned to the ground system tanks to be reused later.
@@hawkdsl The COPV cover that blew off was on the opposite side of the booster from the BQD that was releasing CH4. Fire didn't start until the booster slowed way down from landing burn start.
Imagine if you said: "I'm going to throw the Eifel Tower almost into space, then I'll make it turn around and fly back to France, and have it land gently on the very spot that it took off from. People would say "You're Nuts!".. Well, here you go, SpaceX has done exactly that.
It's a wonder anyone survived with these dangerous sonic booms, good job the FAA was there to push paper around a desk more to mitigate the sonic booms!
I think I have a good theory on the engine warping and the "simple" fix. The engines had the full force of the atmosphere pushing on them (like cupping your hand holding it out the car window), and that combined with the heat softening the metal on reentry started to bend the engine bells. After all, without constant coolant, they would melt in seconds after ignition. I think their solution will be to simply start running coolant through them during the descent, which they may not have been doing (we know they *can* do this, as there was a call out for starship that coolant was to flow through the engines shortly before the flip maneuver burn). I think this would solve most of the issues. There's no way the engines can't in principle withstand the force of reentry given that they experience much more stress at launch, so I believe it's just a matter of cooling, hence why Elon seemed pretty confident it would be an easy fix.
Indeed, that's the way to go in modern rockets. You cool your engine with the fuel, which in turn becomes superheated and easy to ignite. Fuel does 2 jobs in one go. As Elon implied, I imagine you simply alter your fuel rates to the engines, although this solution will probably slightly decrease payload as the net effect will be to use a little more fuel to achieve a slower descent which then has less friction burn. Either that or to burn the fuel in a different way such that it is more cooling and less power. I'm sure both are possible. It would be hard to get this balance exactly correct first time. (btw, I say "simply" when nothing is simple here)
@@snaplash makes sense, though I imagine it doesn’t really burn any since they’re just cycling the cooled liquids. My guess after thinking about this more is that, like with starship, they do cycle the fuel/coolant through the engines prior to the landing burn, but didn’t realize that they’ll need to start it way sooner to combat the heating from coming back down
The warping came from the Heating of the nozzles during decent and then rapidly cooling once the engines started again as the nozzles are cooled with the freezing propellant.
I think the issue was that the outboard engines weren't having any propellant circulating through them; the additional internal pressure and regenerative cooling provided by the propellant would have likely kept them unblemished, so it should be a somewhat simple change to the booster
@@randomalt9617 Agreed. All engines need to be cooled in concert, regardless of which are firing. The outer engine bells were being heated from only the inside, causing uneven heating. They need to be cooled if the other engines are firing and being cooled.
@@bobguy6542 Main thing I worry about is that the propellant being fed through more engines will head it up more, meaning the thrust of the other engines will be slightly lower, as the hotter fluids would have to flow through at a lower density
Even Tim Dodd, "The Everyday Astronaut," said he might not have believed they caught it on the first try himself if not for his reports coming from his cameras and his crew. That catch really was incredibly perfect.
Yeah! And right after this, Elon literally went to help campaign for one of those people that would call it fake. trump recently said elon is "building rocketships to nowhere, and driverless cars that crash." He needs elons💲so he though he would insult him and his companies a little bit to speed it up. Just as 🤯 as this amazing achievement.
I like to watch launches live. i catch one or two a week. i caught this one right before launch but didn’t know it was also landing. what i then witnessed made me cry
nothing else in the world right now is more inspiring than spacex. so happy Elon is in the US. Imagine a society that encouraged greatness rather than constantly try to tear it down and convince people greatness is evil
Imagine a society where science is anathema to the religious people in charge. Imagine a society where traveling into space is forbidden due to stone-age religious beliefs that "that's God's territory, we can't go there."
is a flight 6 with the current iteration of starship even necessary? like I feel like many things have been solved now and the things that still went wrong were mainly issues with the flap heat shield which the next iteration of starship addresses anyways. so tbh i don't see a reason they need to continue with this before block 2. not that i don't want another flight, always awesome to see it, just I'm not sure another flight is necessary or even desirable considering the cost of launching. maybe its time to speedrun to the next iteration, block 2 and second launchtower first very like after the successfull landing of a ship for the first time.
They can get more data which would be beneficial. More data on the booster would also be beneficial. Most of the cost comes from the booster. Around 70%. So just landing the booster is good enough for another flight
Landing the booster. Also, ship engine in space relight test. Then we may start to see things like ship catch tests. Honestly if they did a high-altitude campaign for ship catching it'd be awesome.
You're not considering the fact that the entire thing is a giant testbed. They have a lot more to perfect, and this isn't the final ship. Elon has a bigger version planned......
if anything, they could use a similar flight plan, have the booster return the same way, but use the ship to deploy some cargo and/or go orbital for some further tests.
Not designed to land in water, it is not expected to survive intact in seawater once falling over into the sea. A ton of very cold water hitting volatile chemicals, and also entrapping some of them. Very likely to go boom any time they land it in the ocean unless some day they add that as an actual design criteria and design for water landings.
Like chopsticks reaching for a treat, They grasp the rocket, a celestial feat. A gentle squeeze, a cosmic hold, As the rocket's journey comes to a fold. A captive spacecraft, is it's cosmic prize.
I think it’s doable. I mean maybe not within an hour but much faster than f9 because f9 had to land in open space and then have to transport back (after inspection sure) which starship booster will save time in.
@@santoshsharmaadhikari3623 with the new engine i think its for sure doable but i just dont know if they will ever get back to back approvals with the way the FAA has been going.
Nah, reusing a booster is absolutely crazy Nah, landing a booster on a ship at sea is absoloutly crazy Nah, a 100% private/civilian space mission is absolutely crazy Nah, reusing a booster ten times is absolutely crazy Nah, reusing a booster twenty times is absolutely crazy Nah, a private space company is absolutely crazy You know what, you are right, 1 hour turn around is absolutely crazy
I have to smile thinking about going back in time to the engineers at Morton Thiokol when they were almost done with the design of the Shuttle's SRBs and telling them "Oh yeah.... and we want you to have them fly back to the launch pad and then catch them with a big old thingy so we can use them again real soon. :)
Seriously, even if you say it was a fluke of science and engineering, it was ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!!!. I hope what they have done works everytime that it becomes the usual practice. That would be the true test...
@@jasonjackson8111 Whether he lands humans there, or it's just a manned mission that sends a bunch of FPV drones down, I don't care. If we can make it that far, surely we can land some tin cans that can somehow provide for a continuing scientific outpost there.
I know the rapid turn around is still a long way off, but I wonder if SpaceX would consider putting payloads on board for the next few test flights. Even if a landing fails, it seems that getting gear into orbit is now possible.
So far no starship orbit would have kept any payload in orbit. The orbit was picked to make sure anything that went up re-entered just in case they lost control of starship. On flights where they start full orbits and deorbiting I suspect might see some kind of payload testing.
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom exactly. They have to demonstrate they can deorbit before they can fly an orbital trajectory since starship would be an unprecedented amount of space debris if it got stuck there.
A dummy payload doesn't prevent deorbit. Eventually they must demonstrate this system can lift the 150 t block of ice and still have enough fuel for landings.
I watched the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle flights and splashdowns/landings, and certainly the Apollo 11 moon mission. The Space X program is super exciting to see, and the capture of the super heavy booster falling like a brick blows me away.
This is an amazing accomplishment! Being born in 1947 I've been around from the time we couldn't successfully launch anything capable of making orbit to the moon to voyager an Mars and now a fully automated capture of a returning large booster. Now if we could figure out how to make these flights without burning tons fuel with it's impact on the environment that will really be something! Maybe take a look at Moon Maiden's magnetic space coupe from Dick Tracey?
cool... was wondering why no water spray to prevent heat damage so this was the first I saw the pad irrigation and realized most of what was coming off the pad as the jet came in contact was steam not dust
The one thing that SpaceX has that even NASA doesn't, is the ability to just blow billion dollar ships up if that's what it takes to make progress. Big Money is a big cure for just about any engineering problem you can imagine. I think the general saying is "Quantity has a Quality all its own."
From some angles the Booster appeared to get Very Close to the Launch Tower as it was angling in for its final catch position. It also seemed the Tower took some direct Raptor exhaust for several seconds during that same last minute maneuver. ? Even w/ a few minor anomalies SpaceX made this Booster catch look like they'd done it before. Amazing ! So they've got some Heat tile work to do around the Flap gaps and a protective outer "chine" took some hits. All seemingly simple fixes after this stunt. I just wonder where on Earth they'll set up to catch a StarShip and how long until they try Orbital Refueling.
Thank you for this! It did answer a few questions for me, for sure. As a side note, favorite food in the world is sushi and I use chopsticks fairly often, then. Next time I have sushi, I will propose a toast to SpaceX!!
Many young people may not even be able to appreciate what just happened. I remember watching the Apollo missions in high school. For me, it was a dream come true. My younger siblings had little to no interest in it.
@@Quakeboy02 I feel you sir. I work in the controls function of a large Automobile company and in my team meeting today, I mentioned about this remarkable achievement and how my entire Sunday went into marveling over this (going over videos, tweets, technical discussions, etc.) and they were hardly enthusiastic. I was jumping off my seat telling them about it and even though they acknowledged, the excitement was not the same. They were barely aware of it. And THIS IS CONTROLS! SpaceX catching a 200 ton booster falling at Mach 7 by a chopstick mechanism is an incredibly challenging GNC problem to solve and yet I wish my colleagues were tad bit more excited about this unprecedented milestone towards full and rapid reusability. Anyway, I am so deeply inspired and still in awe at what I witnessed a couple of days back. Truly grateful to be alive in this moment!
@@OrangeDurito "Truly grateful to be alive in this moment!" Yeah, me too! But to be fair, the booster wasn't falling at Mach 7 when it was caught. I doubt it was traveling at more than a couple of feet per second, if that. They seem to have this rocket control *stuff* (technical term) down to an actual science! I doubt I've got another 10, much less 20 years left in me, but I do hope they get to Mars before my clock runs down!
I feel so clueless.. the implications of the possible launch cadence was really all that floored me. But, really, the opportunity to inspect a fully intact booster rocket after it has been used is too enormous for me to wrap my head around.
Specs: Height: 69 meters (226 feet) - Same as a 23 story building Diameter: 9 meters (30 feet) Engines: Up to 33 Raptor engines (using methane and liquid oxygen) Thrust: Approximately 74 MN (16.5 million pounds) Mass (Fully Loaded): Over 3,600 metric tons Burn Time: Around 170 seconds Reusability: Designed for rapid reuse via the Mechazilla tower catch system
I noticed that as the booster was coming down between the chopsticks, you could see frost from remaining liquid Fuel/Oxygen in the tanks. I hope Booster 12 will be kept for its historic significance, but I understand that Space-X might need to exam it in detail to learn to make it easily reusable.
The nozzle warping issue will likely NOT be addressed before IFT-6. SpaceX already has a major redesign of the booster (Block 2) and a 3rd version of their Raptor engines incoming, so the nozzle warping issue will likely be addressed as those are implemented.
Not possible. It is possible that this booster will never fly again. They would not want to waste a launch with the same article when they can iterate and test a new article with a lot of changes!
Not only is it the largest booster rocket ever flown but now SpaceX has a completely intact example that has flown an entire launch cycle. They can examine everything from metal fatigue to o-ring wear and all of the bearings on the vehicle.
the data alone from this booster and on top of that they can reuse or recycle the booster.
Great to get
worth billions in research!
@@shockers12512this is an old block variant and they will be using v3 raptors soon already old technology doubt it will fly again but i could be wrong
ORING WEAR
I am still in disbelief that they caught it first try
Dittos
Knew they would but first attempt was surreal
I think all of us are surprised by that
I must be one of the few who actually thought they would do it on the first attempt.
It’s unreal, then you remember that their trajectory control has been low key 25th century worthy since the early days of F9, even. They’re just flexing muscles we’ve forgotten were there this whole time.
I saw John Glenn launch, some progress has been made
I don't think people get it. This was like catching a skyscraper. I mean seriously. What a feat they have accomplished.
A skyscraper that was moving at 3000+ kmh just a minute before...
A skyscraper coming from space.
And beyond that, I don’t think people realize that these vehicles will eventually make us multi planetary. These are significant achievements in human history.
No it was like catching a massive booster
a 16-18 floor 300 ton skyscraper... pretty amazing feat indeed!
I’m old, and I have to say this is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen in my life. 🇺🇸
Nah, you're not old unless you saw all of the Gemini AND Apollo missions. My mom took me out one night when I was a kid and pointed to a moving light in the sky and said that was the Sputnik going overhead. She was wrong, and it was Echo 2 or something like that, but at least she tried.
It is so hard for me to fathom how this massive thing was caught so precisely on those two tiny points.
I didn’t realize they had to get the orientation correct; that is amazing
Even if they missed the pins it could still be catched by the gridfins
@@paranaenselol I doubt the gridfins could take the load, theyre not designed for that
@@willrsan before the pins the grid fins were used to catch and hold superheavy, im sure they could but not for long time and without damages, like i said they could be used in a emergency
@@willrsan Musk himself said the grid fins could be used. I think they'd be more likely to damage the chopsticks than be damaged by them.
Seeing the booster catch is something I'll never forget, way to go SpaceX!!🚀👍👍
I still cant quite believe what im seeing.
History in the making!
Mind boggling. Saw it amazed by it .
I think the boosters landing on the pads was more impressive.
The design team just achieve an incredible goal. One on One! What a smart bunch of people!
*computers.
@@lamarw7757 With algorithms and programs that can even solve the issue created by humans.
@@lamarw7757 behind computers there are human.
My dad lived through the Apollo Era! Now I get to live through the SpaceX Era!
Sorry to hear :(
@@oldmedstudent1750 Wtf does that mean. Are you a Russian or chinese bot?
Even the wildest dreams of the Apollo era didn’t have a 150m tall robot plucking a falling 22-storey skyscraper out of the air as though it were a feather.
@@Steelninja77 Why you so mad bro?
Calm down lad, pretty sure that the person you replied to assumed this means that OCs dad is no longer with us. @@Steelninja77
I am completely amazed with the performance of this flight. I think we've entered a new phase in spacecraft design and capabilities. The future seems very exciting. Great video
I think its incredible how both starships can survive re-entry even with a damaged heat shield and partially burning up, i think this demonstrates how much better the stainless steel is over aluminium that the shuttle used.
And much better than the carbon fibre they were intending to use! I remember a lot of people mocking them for choosing yee old stainless steel rather than 'futuristic' carbon composites!
From the moment I understood the weakness of composites, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel.
Imagine being an astronaut in Starship, knowing your ship can go through re-entry even with a compromised heat shield without breaking a sweat 😎
@@ryan.crosby Steel melts long before ceramic composites do.
@@okirooju3787 IKR, crew would have likely survived on these last two landings if they were caught by the launch tower, the explosion likely only happened on impact with the ocean, same couldn't have been said for columbia.
Imagine being in competition with SpaceX.... Suddenly feeling that you are a decade after them.
A decade behind probably only get you to F9 landing. I feel they are way more than a decade ahead of all their competitors
Feller like a century ahead🎉🎉🎉🎉
About 2 decades for most, the only one I feel is a decade behind is China, as they are close to getting a working Falcon 9 prototype copy, but Falcon 9 is a Decade behind Starship. Other than that the only other companies I think stand a chance of surviving Starship is Rocket Lab and Stoke. And that's because they aren't actually competing with starship, and instead are aiming to make fully re-usable vehicles for smaller payloads, they're more competing with falcon 9, which if they solve full re-usability, will be possible. whereas Starship will still monopolize the large and medium payload launch market.
Everyone other than those 3 are likely going to be out of the launch market entirely or for the next 2 decades while they try to develop something that can compete with Starship. If New Glenn is successful in re-using its first stage, they may only be a decade behind as they have to completely re-develop their second stage architecture to be fully re-usable, whether they can survive that re-development depends on if customers are willing to pay the premium for the same capability (obviously not), the US government artificially backs them because they don't want SpaceX to have a monopoly (possible) or if they can get enough capital to take on losses and massive R&D costs for the decade that they will be losing out to SpaceX (possible as people will see the massive success SpaceX will be profiting from and want a piece of that pie), and all that is contingent on SpaceX not making progress or innovation over that decade which obviously seems unlikely.
Blue Origin probably feels like crap after watching that.😂
Yep, go ULA!
The tower shook less than it did for the empty chopstick tests. Amazing control of the booster to so softly touch down.
Yeah, but I bet if you were there, you could have heard it clang above the rocket engines. LOL
The tower has shock absorbers. This landing is easier then a regular landing
I'm 75 and watched the Mercury and Apollo missions and worked at Rocketdyne on the Shuttle Engines and now get to see the SpaceX era.
Exciting times!
72 here, and I feel the same way! :) W00H00!!!
Credit to Elon Musk for having the vision
Credit to SpaceX team for the execution!
I know there are a lot of great minds in the industry but I think SpaceX's edge is their willingness to take massive risks to their infrastructure.
For the channel:
I really hope you can improve on the voiceover. 2nd time commenting this. I really honestly love your content. No BS, no speculation no hype. It's just the monotonous voiceover. If that's really what you're going for, then maybe I'll just turn on captions.
Once again, please take this constructively.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Private money is more expendable without an ounce of backlash that they get if they were using tax money.
@@evankealthere's been plenty of backlash every time something exploded (even completely expendable test articles). The difference is they just don't care, because they don't need the average voter's approval.
Credit to NASA and by extension the American tax payer for saving Space X from bankruptcy and also for funding Space x for the last five years.
@@evankealSpace X is using tax money, who do you think saved them from bankruptcy and funded the falcon rocket programme?
The one thing that Musk brought to the rocket industry is the will (and the money) to accept that things were going to blow up (a lot) and just instrument the hell out of them to find out why, instead of spending more and more money on outdated ideas in the hopes that nothing will kersplode.
Just as a BTW comment..The flames coming from the side of the rocket was something expected as SpaceX was venting out unused methane gas..It WAS an incredible achievement nonetheless! Huge KUDOS to SpaceX engineers!!
Though that seems plausible and I would like that to be true, I've been looking for an official source that confirms the fire was due to intentional venting. Can you provide your source?
Can't find an official statement on this.. So unless you got a source for what you said then it just looks like you just made up what you wanted to be true.
@@dawgma I think you are just trolling!
@@dawgma source it wasn't?
@@dawgma Lots of people pass speculation off as fact.
Another reason orientation of the booster matters, besides making sure the pins land on the rails, is the quick disconnect. They don’t want to have to remove the booster from the OLM, rotate it 180 degrees, and put it back.
And it turns out they can rotate the thing, within limits, on the chopsticks. You can see the long leadscrews that move the catch rails.
@@UncleKennysPlace likely for fine adjustments.
It was an amazing catch 👏
Given the fact that the outer engines were not being chilled or the nozzles being regeneratively cooled during the decent and subsequent landing burn, it’s safe to say that they experienced higher heating than normal, which in addition to the atmospheric pressure, is likely the cause of the warping of the nozzles. I expect to see the outer engines being chilled during reentry and landing on the next flight.
@@Excelcior58 Just lox.
Yes, that's pretty much what Elon said.
Did he? Souce?
I'm pretty sure I saw a video recently talking about using the fuel as a coolant before it was burned. But, whatever.
That is a venerable technology pioneered by Soviet rocket engineers
Amazing, simply Amazing….! As a kid, I watched John Glenn and all the Mercury, and Apollo missions. Watched in 1969 Neil Armstrong land on the moon, the first Shuttle, and all the bad things too.. Space Ex is doing some absolutely amazing and unheard of things. This is truly Science Fiction coming of age…..! Very very cool…..!
A great time to be a rocket fan. I also remember Apollo, the rise and fall of the space shuttle, and now we have SpaceX. Good times.
I remember John Glenn's flight on Friendship 7. I also remember that monkey that got sent up and so on back to the Echo satellites. It's been a hell of a trip so far! I'm hoping we get someone at least in orbit of Mars before I have to punch my final ticket!
always glad you wait a few days before posting a video so much info coming out its nice to have solid accurate information about what happened.
Europa Clipper also launched Today
Indeed
Oh yeah. That, too.
😂😂
That is actually awesome!
I would have chosen to send a lander to Europa instead of an orbital satilite. Better, both!
@@appliedfacts It's right in the radiation zone of jupiter. Like our Van allen belts. But deadlier to humans and electronics. And so they can only clip in and out of it . hence the name Europa clipper.It's gonna zip past 49 times sampling the place with radars and all sorts.
That outro quote has never been more true in Starship’s case, so lucky to have watched it live as it was one for the history books.
And teachers today probably taught a lesson on gender affirmation instead of showing one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind to date.
Now I can see how it was caught by pins and not fins. WOW... how .. such accuracy.?
Yeah. How? Looks so difficult
@@cube2fox they got a hole-in-one on this one let's see if they can do it again and again and again.
Really good programmers
@@Spacewith2224 great point
It's really big. This is one of the advantages of everything being so big. 3m accuracy looks quite inaccurate for a F9 landing, but between the movement in the arms and the scale of the booster, is absolutely fine here. Just because it is bigger doesn't mean 1m accuracy is harder, but it does mean that the same accuracy looks much more precise compared to vehicle scale. Those pins look about 50cm long.
It's one of the advantages spaceX have in not having shareholders to impress. When faced with a problem that doesn't have a clever shareholder impressing solution, they don't have to care that the solution is crude. 'Just make it bigger' seems to solve a whole heap of problems!
@3:20. SpaceX. might have started the deluge system as a precaution in case of a crash. It would have suppressed a fire from the rocket.
I don't think water can suppress a fire created by rocket fuel. Water has no effect on fires created with jet fuel. The water daily leach system is pad protection from the force of the engines on the concrete.
Incase of a crash, water does very little for you. It's not solid material burning, it's a gas. The water deluge ensures that the concrete around and the steel plate do not experience excess concentrated high temperature as that would warp the plate or crack the concrete
@@jamesbarnesii4124 I'll have to think about your point some more. It still seems intended to reduce damage to the area if the catch didn't go as planned. It is an interesting topic.
@@jamesbarnesii4124 Starship doesn't use jet fuel. It's liquid methane... Water could help to save some ground equipment from heat damage in the case of mishap.
The heavy booster uses gaseous fuels, no liquid or solid to burn.
Thanks for the update. The amount of precision to make the "catch" possible is amazing.
I like your channel very succinct content and not a bunch of clickbait or hype
Me too😊
I can’t remember any sci fi that anticipated this launch and retrieval system. Imagine a spaceport with a dozen of these things going. Launch stages dropping down, upper stages trundling along or waiting to be lifted up, arms dismounting launch stages or lifting upper stages, passenger and cargo terminals linked to the towers.
Actually, in the earlier days of scifi they spent a lot of time on the mechanics of takeoff, orbiting, and landing. Today, the space vehicles in scifi are just cars.
@@Quakeboy02 - not this exact, very mechanical, system though. I'm not old enough to remember the pulp magazines, but I cut my teeth on Heinlein, Vance, Clark, Dick, Pohl, Herbert, that generation.
@@FlyxPat I was in LA about 25 years ago and walked into a book store in some back alley and they had a bunch of pulps for sale. Stupid me didn't just buy them all, and picked out 7 of them with such stories as "The Year of the Jackpot" by Heinlein, and best of all "Weyr Search" by Anne McCaffery. :)
How does it land like that like a gentle baby? I have watched this so many times...and I am still astonished. Way to go, SpaceEx team! You did so awesome 👌 So proud 🎉🎉🎉
Think of it as using the variable thrust from the rocket engines like a helicopter uses its rotary wings to land. If you look carefully, you can see the rocket exhaust moving around to position the booster in the chopsticks.
The fire on the side of the booster was intentional. Propellants were being released through the quick disconnect ports, which quickly ignited and burned. Normally, during a test fire, the exact same thing is done, except the propellants are returned to the ground system tanks to be reused later.
I don't know man
I keep seeing this, but it coincided with the cover over the COPV blowing off.
The fire might be intentional but the missing cover from the raceway definitely wasn’t. 😂
@@hawkdsl The COPV cover that blew off was on the opposite side of the booster from the BQD that was releasing CH4. Fire didn't start until the booster slowed way down from landing burn start.
@@dmsdmullins ahh, thanks. It is curious that the panel blew off. The COPV there looks fine. NSF had good shots moving the ship back to mega bay.
Imagine if you said: "I'm going to throw the Eifel Tower almost into space, then I'll make it turn around and fly back to France, and have it land gently on the very spot that it took off from. People would say "You're Nuts!".. Well, here you go, SpaceX has done exactly that.
It came in so fast!. Sonic booms right before capture
It's a wonder anyone survived with these dangerous sonic booms, good job the FAA was there to push paper around a desk more to mitigate the sonic booms!
@@aether222 According to the FAA, an earthworm has become deaf in one ear. More investigations will be needed to solve this problem.
@@Wirmish mishap investigation, a single piece of ice fell on a sand piper
@@Wirmish Oh no, clearly they needed more time to make darts with their paperwork!
Whoever made the brakes on this thing didn't mess around! LOL (yeah, I know they use rocket propulsion as brakes)
Great recap and breakdown! Good to see all the different landing angles too. Thank you.
I think I have a good theory on the engine warping and the "simple" fix. The engines had the full force of the atmosphere pushing on them (like cupping your hand holding it out the car window), and that combined with the heat softening the metal on reentry started to bend the engine bells. After all, without constant coolant, they would melt in seconds after ignition. I think their solution will be to simply start running coolant through them during the descent, which they may not have been doing (we know they *can* do this, as there was a call out for starship that coolant was to flow through the engines shortly before the flip maneuver burn). I think this would solve most of the issues. There's no way the engines can't in principle withstand the force of reentry given that they experience much more stress at launch, so I believe it's just a matter of cooling, hence why Elon seemed pretty confident it would be an easy fix.
The "coolant" is the fuel. They need it to complete the landing.
Indeed, that's the way to go in modern rockets. You cool your engine with the fuel, which in turn becomes superheated and easy to ignite. Fuel does 2 jobs in one go. As Elon implied, I imagine you simply alter your fuel rates to the engines, although this solution will probably slightly decrease payload as the net effect will be to use a little more fuel to achieve a slower descent which then has less friction burn. Either that or to burn the fuel in a different way such that it is more cooling and less power. I'm sure both are possible. It would be hard to get this balance exactly correct first time. (btw, I say "simply" when nothing is simple here)
@@snaplash makes sense, though I imagine it doesn’t really burn any since they’re just cycling the cooled liquids. My guess after thinking about this more is that, like with starship, they do cycle the fuel/coolant through the engines prior to the landing burn, but didn’t realize that they’ll need to start it way sooner to combat the heating from coming back down
Well done SpaceX.
I always thought the heat of re-entry would be one of the trickiest challenges.
The warping came from the Heating of the nozzles during decent and then rapidly cooling once the engines started again as the nozzles are cooled with the freezing propellant.
I think the issue was that the outboard engines weren't having any propellant circulating through them; the additional internal pressure and regenerative cooling provided by the propellant would have likely kept them unblemished, so it should be a somewhat simple change to the booster
@@randomalt9617 Agreed. All engines need to be cooled in concert, regardless of which are firing. The outer engine bells were being heated from only the inside, causing uneven heating. They need to be cooled if the other engines are firing and being cooled.
can that be fixed/prevented.
@@hawkdsl yes, SpaceX will have it fixed by IFT-6
@@bobguy6542 Main thing I worry about is that the propellant being fed through more engines will head it up more, meaning the thrust of the other engines will be slightly lower, as the hotter fluids would have to flow through at a lower density
This is a superb video. No BS, straight to the information and very clear. Thank you.
I kept seeing seeing this same clip of a falling cigarette are Twitter. Glad these videos could shed some light on what I was seeing! Thx! :P
"Falling cigarette" lol. It sure looked that way. Very fitting description 😂😂
Imagine this happening again, every hour, all day. Just amazing.
To think there will be people calling it fake is just🤯
Even Tim Dodd, "The Everyday Astronaut," said he might not have believed they caught it on the first try himself if not for his reports coming from his cameras and his crew. That catch really was incredibly perfect.
someone always does. ignore.
Yeah! And right after this, Elon literally went to help campaign for one of those people that would call it fake. trump recently said elon is "building rocketships to nowhere, and driverless cars that crash." He needs elons💲so he though he would insult him and his companies a little bit to speed it up. Just as 🤯 as this amazing achievement.
You think it was real? They just played the video in reverse, the rocket actually took off from the pad like that.
of course it was fake, you note the shot from space showed the earth as round, which we know is false.
I like to watch launches live. i catch one or two a week. i caught this one right before launch but didn’t know it was also landing. what i then witnessed made me cry
What would Wilbur and Orville have thought.
GREAT to the point explanation of the high points of the flight. Great job.
Wow more awesome angles for this already magical incredible history moments ❤❤❤
nothing else in the world right now is more inspiring than spacex. so happy Elon is in the US.
Imagine a society that encouraged greatness rather than constantly try to tear it down and convince people greatness is evil
Imagine a society where science is anathema to the religious people in charge. Imagine a society where traveling into space is forbidden due to stone-age religious beliefs that "that's God's territory, we can't go there."
Best catch of any cricket match I witnessed in real life. Superb pick
Surprised Elon didn’t have a crowd of Optimus robots come out and assist him with the inspection.
And do what exactly?
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom They assist him with the inspection. It would be more fun than Disneyland could ever offer.
Wait, you didn't see them? The new AI is truly remarkable, isn't it? (ROFL)
Never get tired of watching that catch. It's still so unreal
Flying grain silos and chopsticks that can catch massive rockets. Elon is just magical to work all this out.
A clear, concise report, as usual. Thank you!
is a flight 6 with the current iteration of starship even necessary? like I feel like many things have been solved now and the things that still went wrong were mainly issues with the flap heat shield which the next iteration of starship addresses anyways. so tbh i don't see a reason they need to continue with this before block 2.
not that i don't want another flight, always awesome to see it, just I'm not sure another flight is necessary or even desirable considering the cost of launching. maybe its time to speedrun to the next iteration, block 2 and second launchtower first very like after the successfull landing of a ship for the first time.
They can get more data which would be beneficial. More data on the booster would also be beneficial. Most of the cost comes from the booster. Around 70%. So just landing the booster is good enough for another flight
Landing the booster. Also, ship engine in space relight test. Then we may start to see things like ship catch tests. Honestly if they did a high-altitude campaign for ship catching it'd be awesome.
You're not considering the fact that the entire thing is a giant testbed.
They have a lot more to perfect, and this isn't the final ship.
Elon has a bigger version planned......
if anything, they could use a similar flight plan, have the booster return the same way, but use the ship to deploy some cargo and/or go orbital for some further tests.
Why not use the last V1 to circularize the orbit and then deorbit? They might want to start thinking recovery with the V2's.
keen for more detailed content!!!
Did the starship suffer a RUD following splashdown, or was that the FTS being triggered to make it sink? It was quite a fireball in the water.
Not designed to land in water, it is not expected to survive intact in seawater once falling over into the sea. A ton of very cold water hitting volatile chemicals, and also entrapping some of them. Very likely to go boom any time they land it in the ocean unless some day they add that as an actual design criteria and design for water landings.
@@tonyvelasco5732they will also be catching the ship with the arms
Yeah, RUD/bonus fireworks show. Triggering FTS is probably not necessary over open ocean.
Given what we know about SpaceX and Elon Musk, it's not very likely that he left anything to chance. IOW, it was blown up.
I'm amazed at how precise it was. I've never seen a Falcon hit the bullseye as well as that.
Like chopsticks reaching for a treat,
They grasp the rocket, a celestial feat.
A gentle squeeze, a cosmic hold,
As the rocket's journey comes to a fold.
A captive spacecraft, is it's cosmic prize.
Me when watching the livestream:
"THEY DID NOT JUST LAND THAT!"
nah 1 hour turn around is absolutely crazy.
1 week turnaround would still be crazy
I think it’s doable. I mean maybe not within an hour but much faster than f9 because f9 had to land in open space and then have to transport back (after inspection sure) which starship booster will save time in.
@@santoshsharmaadhikari3623 with the new engine i think its for sure doable but i just dont know if they will ever get back to back approvals with the way the FAA has been going.
@@zachmoyer1849 If the flight plan is the same, new approval isn't needed.
It's aspiration. Reality tends to be a little corrective of that sorta thing.
Nah, reusing a booster is absolutely crazy
Nah, landing a booster on a ship at sea is absoloutly crazy
Nah, a 100% private/civilian space mission is absolutely crazy
Nah, reusing a booster ten times is absolutely crazy
Nah, reusing a booster twenty times is absolutely crazy
Nah, a private space company is absolutely crazy
You know what, you are right, 1 hour turn around is absolutely crazy
That his happened with a few issues which need attention is normal for test flights -- that this catch even happened at all is astounding! 😲😁
This is one of the best videos of all aspects of SH&SS flt 5 yet. Thanks.
& Kodos.
I have to smile thinking about going back in time to the engineers at Morton Thiokol when they were almost done with the design of the Shuttle's SRBs and telling them "Oh yeah.... and we want you to have them fly back to the launch pad and then catch them with a big old thingy so we can use them again real soon. :)
Masterful control engineering on display.
Like a scene from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
I’m still stunned, simply amazed.
Seriously, even if you say it was a fluke of science and engineering, it was ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!!!. I hope what they have done works everytime that it becomes the usual practice. That would be the true test...
I was in high school when we did the Apollo missions, and now we have this! Hopefully I can make it a few more years and see a manned mission to Mars!
He said in the next 5 years he’s planning to land one on mars I would call that crazy but after seeing this it’s might be true
@@jasonjackson8111 Whether he lands humans there, or it's just a manned mission that sends a bunch of FPV drones down, I don't care. If we can make it that far, surely we can land some tin cans that can somehow provide for a continuing scientific outpost there.
it's wild that they're going to do that again
The thing that people find hard to comprehend is that the booster alone is about the same size as the statue of Liberty!!!!!!!!!! SKILLZ!!!!!!!!
Do you know what. That was actually an excellent summary video
Clean, clear and simple. Well done you. Likes and subscribed Glad I found you
Idk about launching an hour after catching the booster.
There should be an indepth inspection of the booster before it's used again
that is the goal they will inspect it until they are confident that they dont have to besides some key structural elements.
I know the rapid turn around is still a long way off, but I wonder if SpaceX would consider putting payloads on board for the next few test flights. Even if a landing fails, it seems that getting gear into orbit is now possible.
So far no starship orbit would have kept any payload in orbit. The orbit was picked to make sure anything that went up re-entered just in case they lost control of starship. On flights where they start full orbits and deorbiting I suspect might see some kind of payload testing.
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom exactly. They have to demonstrate they can deorbit before they can fly an orbital trajectory since starship would be an unprecedented amount of space debris if it got stuck there.
A dummy payload doesn't prevent deorbit. Eventually they must demonstrate this system can lift the 150 t block of ice and still have enough fuel for landings.
Pins and fins for the win.
I watched the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle flights and splashdowns/landings, and certainly the Apollo 11 moon mission. The Space X program is super exciting to see, and the capture of the super heavy booster falling like a brick blows me away.
I'm in awe.
Great video and information. The catch of the booster is incredible. We love rockets.
This is an amazing accomplishment! Being born in 1947 I've been around from the time we couldn't successfully launch anything capable of making orbit to the moon to voyager an Mars and now a fully automated capture of a returning large booster. Now if we could figure out how to make these flights without burning tons fuel with it's impact on the environment that will really be something! Maybe take a look at Moon Maiden's magnetic space coupe from Dick Tracey?
Given gravity, it was always going to be a very difficult task, i.e. rocket science, to boost payloads off the planet and into space.
The right team for the job let's go!!!
Mind blowing genius 👏👏
first try with minimal damage, unbelievable
cool... was wondering why no
water spray to prevent heat damage
so this was the first I saw the pad
irrigation and realized most of what
was coming off the pad as the jet
came in contact was steam not dust
What a wonderful, thrilling experience it must be for an engineer to work for Musk. Hard, demanding and rewarding it must be. Incredible.
The one thing that SpaceX has that even NASA doesn't, is the ability to just blow billion dollar ships up if that's what it takes to make progress. Big Money is a big cure for just about any engineering problem you can imagine. I think the general saying is "Quantity has a Quality all its own."
Bravo. 'Splendid persistent, immensely important step change engineering. We're in a new era from this point.
It seems like the arms can sense on which one to move & how by how much closer to the booster.
Amazing absolutely amazing
That launch and catch was the most metal shit we’ve seen space related in decades.
Simply amazing !
From some angles the Booster appeared to get Very Close to the Launch Tower as it was angling in for its final catch position. It also seemed the Tower took some direct Raptor exhaust for several seconds during that same last minute maneuver. ? Even w/ a few minor anomalies SpaceX made this Booster catch look like they'd done it before. Amazing !
So they've got some Heat tile work to do around the Flap gaps and a protective outer "chine" took some hits. All seemingly simple fixes after this stunt. I just wonder where on Earth they'll set up to catch a StarShip and how long until they try Orbital Refueling.
Thank you for this! It did answer a few questions for me, for sure.
As a side note, favorite food in the world is sushi and I use chopsticks fairly often, then. Next time I have sushi, I will propose a toast to SpaceX!!
This calls for the invention and naming of a new roll!
@@pong9000 May be the "Elon Robot?" Or simply "The Booster Roll!"
Just truly awesome
Congratulations ❤❤
Those close up shots are icing on the cake 😚😚
This is so beautiful and astounding that the feeling is almost spiritual. What a time to be alive!
Many young people may not even be able to appreciate what just happened. I remember watching the Apollo missions in high school. For me, it was a dream come true. My younger siblings had little to no interest in it.
@@Quakeboy02 I feel you sir. I work in the controls function of a large Automobile company and in my team meeting today, I mentioned about this remarkable achievement and how my entire Sunday went into marveling over this (going over videos, tweets, technical discussions, etc.) and they were hardly enthusiastic. I was jumping off my seat telling them about it and even though they acknowledged, the excitement was not the same. They were barely aware of it. And THIS IS CONTROLS! SpaceX catching a 200 ton booster falling at Mach 7 by a chopstick mechanism is an incredibly challenging GNC problem to solve and yet I wish my colleagues were tad bit more excited about this unprecedented milestone towards full and rapid reusability. Anyway, I am so deeply inspired and still in awe at what I witnessed a couple of days back. Truly grateful to be alive in this moment!
@@OrangeDurito "Truly grateful to be alive in this moment!" Yeah, me too! But to be fair, the booster wasn't falling at Mach 7 when it was caught. I doubt it was traveling at more than a couple of feet per second, if that. They seem to have this rocket control *stuff* (technical term) down to an actual science! I doubt I've got another 10, much less 20 years left in me, but I do hope they get to Mars before my clock runs down!
Excellent video essay on the flight! I didn't Know Elon had already taken a look at it himself.
I feel so clueless.. the implications of the possible launch cadence was really all that floored me. But, really, the opportunity to inspect a fully intact booster rocket after it has been used is too enormous for me to wrap my head around.
Specs:
Height: 69 meters (226 feet) - Same as a 23 story building
Diameter: 9 meters (30 feet)
Engines: Up to 33 Raptor engines (using methane and liquid oxygen)
Thrust: Approximately 74 MN (16.5 million pounds)
Mass (Fully Loaded): Over 3,600 metric tons
Burn Time: Around 170 seconds
Reusability: Designed for rapid reuse via the Mechazilla tower catch system
I noticed that as the booster was coming down between the chopsticks, you could see frost from remaining liquid Fuel/Oxygen in the tanks. I hope Booster 12 will be kept for its historic significance, but I understand that Space-X might need to exam it in detail to learn to make it easily reusable.
The nozzle warping issue will likely NOT be addressed before IFT-6. SpaceX already has a major redesign of the booster (Block 2) and a 3rd version of their Raptor engines incoming, so the nozzle warping issue will likely be addressed as those are implemented.
Any report on how the launch tower fared?
What an accomplishment! I wonder why Starship didn't go orbital during flight 5.
Fantastic!
I’d love to see them fly that same booster on the next flight, that’d be awesome ❤
Not possible. It is possible that this booster will never fly again. They would not want to waste a launch with the same article when they can iterate and test a new article with a lot of changes!
I wonder if they’re able to test on much smaller scale and workout all problems before out the Starship launch/ retrieval was able to occur?
No. Scale testing in rockets is not as useful as you'd think. The scale changes all the problems.
I look forward to seeing Apollo Lunar Descent Modules in a museum one day due to Starship :)
I’ve watched it over and over and I’m still having a hard time believing it! Did they really pluck one of the world’s largest rockets out of thin air?