Elon responds "Ok" to "We need this view during the catch, please SpaceX!!!"
StarshipMore cameras the merrier! Let's have loads in case the other fail.
Just to be sure
now lets get them on a better streaming service
also makes for great publicity. Have cameras everywhere, with every shot imaginable. These landings and flights are marvels of modern science and technology. Let's show them off.
For science
It’s crazy to even ask. They gonna have cameras every 5 feet on that thing lol
Of course but they are very selective on the shots they publish
that is the crux of it
not because they want to but because they have to. many engineering cams show stuff that is under ITAR.
Doubt sensitive secrets can be obtained by just looking at the outside of the rocket.
ITAR isn't about "secrets." It's about items and technology. Images and video are considered a "deemed export" so one has to be careful.
It needs to survive the launch too.
The arms already have to survive the launch, so should be possible. Perhaps have some insulated housing that can mechanically open a door?
They would be foolish not to have plenty of camera angles.
It also seems like a useful view in case of failure.
Is everyone just breaking down his interviews etc and posting them one sentence at a time? I await the update post of the next sentance
I'd put money on this not even needing to be asked. I'm sure they're going to have several cameras all around the arms to catch every angle of how the catch pins make contact
Yes but they don’t show all of their views on stream…..
yes, ITAR is a thing.
Thats not really ITAR
It is when considered a "deemed export."
i personally would like that view available for later. as part of a recap. maybe a split screen during, at most.
We'll have NSF for the wide!
or Labpadre, or EDA/CosmicPerspective, or StarshipGazer.
How not to land/catch an orbital super heavy booster part 2
I really can't wait for IFT-5
I wish they would publish the raw footage of all their cameras (the external ones anyways)
I don't think they're doing recaps anymore.
How good is angle control around the long axis? Isn't that the axis with the least amount of 'control authority'?
It's also the axis with the least disturbance.
*B0$$-level gridfins have entered the chat*
"You called, boss?"
We will get to find out !
If it fails, we'll find out if the gridfins can hold up the booster.
They might, but would probably be damaged in the process. So that’s a kind of ‘emergency catch’.
This is what i love about Elon, what other billionaire is this open and interactive with the public.
Of course that can also be a major flaw and often gets him into trouble but we won't talk about that here :)
The people who spend their cycles worrying about the trouble which can be spun from everything that someone else does, are the same people who would delete their entire history of that behaviour had they also become a billionaire.
Back on topic though, I might ask if he can do a cheeky 360 half way up in the air. Might get a "yeah" or "sure" out if it?
Lol, go for a 720. Rocket gymnastics.
Elon: "Someone throw a length of pipe in the sky so I can do a sweet backside boardslide into fakie manual."
*cckkssssshhhhhhhhh
*golf claps from the crowd: "Very nice!" "Oh yes! Wonderful!" "Brilliant!"
I snowboard so that gets my full approval.
It’s either this with TwitterX and Tesla robots and TX republican logic or old space.
I am looking forward to the drone view on that landing :)
Ehh, I’d rather have a wide shot so I can see the whole thing
It is possible to have both. To have one view live and then several others to replay. That is a “thing.”
We will get plenty from other youtubers
Hopefully they can afford a second camera then
Maybe just a bit further back and make it portrait instead of landscape.
Oh god no not portrait. There's a reason all great cinematography is shot in landscape, human eyes have a much wider field of view in the horizontal direction than the vertical direction. If our eyes were stacked on top of each other than maybe portrait would look more natural, but that's not how our vision works. The only people that would benefit from a stream shot in portrait would be those watching the stream on Tiktok for some god aweful reason. For everyone else, we would have awful black bars on the sides of the screen
A quick possibly wrong Google puts horizontal FOC at ~200 degrees and vertical at ~130 degrees. Unless you exceed those limits then the limits of human field of view aren't really relevant. There's nothing wrong with portrait video, it's just not intended for desktop viewing. As I'll probably be watching the catch on my phone, I'd appreciate the extra details I get from not having a super zoomed out view. Though we'd likely be in a worst of both worlds situation with a portrait video shown in landscape. But assuming we got a native portrait stream? I'd watch that. The stigma against portrait video when watched on an appropriate device is stupid.
I doubt there will be a dedicated stream to a single camera. So even if it is portrait, it will be in a landscape stream, along with many landscape cameras.
So to get extra details, I'd recommend turning your phone sideways and watch it in landscape mode.
Bro just turn your phone sideways
Bro just let people watch video in whatever orientation they want to
Except that big tall things do work better in portrate
There's a reason all great cinematography is shot in landscape, human eyes have a much wider field of view in the horizontal direction than the vertical direction.
Total viewing area of the eye may be wider than square but visual acuity for an unfocused point is proportional to distance from center of vision. Honestly, wide and super wide screens have been a plague on visual technology in general. Give us our vertical back.
You need to watch the Apollo 11 documentary my friend. The wide angle shots of the Saturn V are better than any cropped footage of a rocket launch I have ever seen
You must understand that portrait can be converted to landscape just by cropping (you can film the scene a bit more zoomed out so nothing is lost). Vice versa is true too, you just need the resolution.
The human brain just wants it to fill the screen of their device, regardless of whether that's landscape or portrait.
Can the three center engines running together throttle down far enough to allow the booster to hover? If they're planning on hovering on two or one engine, how will they deal with the pendulum effect when the engine(s) shut down since it's impossible for the booster to be vertical on a two or one engine hover?
While it can hover, it probably won't. The idea is for it to come to a stop at the exact moment the lifting points hit the arms.
To paraphrase Elon from an old starbase tour with Tim Dodd.
"The booster is 100m long, and will descend at about 10m per second. So it will take about 10 seconds to land.
The whole thing should look rather slow....."
It should, in theory, look very much like a falcon booster landing, where it just lands in a smooth single action.
That's the long term plan though, the quicker the landing, the more payload you get to orbit. For ift5 I think they plan to offset the landing point and then steer her back into the tower. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some hovering for the first attempt tbh
For the next launch the payload is data so the longer it hovers the more payload they get.
I'll see myself out.
I think they plan to offset the landing point and then steer her back into the tower.
That's doing it the hard way.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see some hovering for the first attempt tbh
Hovering does not make landing easier.
Not saying it makes it easier. I'm saying since they are missing the tower (I guess to protect it incase things go badly) then it's entirely likely they will have to hover to get to the accurate landing point.
I'm saying since they are missing the tower (I guess to protect it incase things go badly) then it's entirely likely they will have to hover to get to the accurate landing point.
They are "aiming to miss the tower" in the same sense that Falcon "aims to miss the barge".
But crashing down at 100 m/s does not either - we expect the booster to come to a ‘near hover’ as it approaches touchdown.
Just like Falcon does.
No, not like that. Falcon-9 does a hover-slam. Starship and Super Heavy Booster, can both support full hover.
There is no good reason why they should hover.
True, but for best touchdown control and action, it should be at a ‘near hover’ just before touchdown.
"Hover" implies spending some appreciable length of time at zero vertical speed. There is no advantage to that. You want to hit zero vertical speed at the instant you hit target altitude.
There isn't anything that is easier for a rocket to do while hovering than while descending.
No, but it makes catching easier. There are a couple more variables involved with a catch, as opposed to landing: rotation of the rocket around it's long axis. I'd guess they can't be rotated more than a few degrees off optimum before the catch point will miss the rail on the arm entirely
More importantly is the arms closing and coming in to contact with the rocket. Having a 2 second near-hover (IE, velocity at less than 0.5 m/s) means the arm will have less chance to miss the contact point due to "bouncing" off the side of the booster. We've seen some significant bounce/wobble of the arms when they move quickly
I'm a bit surprised there's no low friction "skid plate" beneath the catch point. Having the arms close all the way several meters below the catch point would help get things closer to a hover-slam-like catch.
Yes, but just before ‘touchdown’ we are expecting it to be at a near hover, so moving vertically very slowly. Plus of course they might take extra care the first time they try this for real.
10 M/s is still over 20 mph.
I wonder if there will be any crush core equivalents for the first few landings.
It's got suspension on the catch bar, but yeah, a shit load of tonnes at 20mph wouldn't be good, though the plan is for it to hit the rails at as near zero speed as possible. So it's gonna be slowing down the whole way.
It's hard not to think there will be a noticeable swing once the engines shut down after the catch, so probably they'll just let it die down on it's own or use some RCS to help
There's no reason it should swing unless there's a failure and it has some horizontal velocity at the end of the catch.
Starship and SuperHeavy can both hover. Raptor can throttle quite far and both vehicles are using more engines. Falcon 9 has 9 while SuperHeavy has 33. So 3 engine is 9% while 1 engine is 11%.
50% is decently deep throttle, though there are lower ones out there with simpler cycles. The main reason they can hover is your second point, TWR from the engines they have. Compared to F9, they have a lot more engines to turn off.
Those figures are back to front. 3 engines = 11%,
And 1 engine = 3%, plus they can each be throttled down to about 40%
The center engines can gimble, they landed test articles gently on one or two engines before.
I think all but the outer ring can gymbal, but in order to be vertical in a hover the thrust centerline must be along the long axis of the rocket in hover. If all of the center engines aren't running at the same thrust then the the thrust angle will be at an angle to the centerline and it will over at an angle.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters | More Letters |
---|---|
ITAR | (US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations |
NSF | NasaSpaceFlight forum |
National Science Foundation | |
RCS | Reaction Control System |
SPMT | Self-Propelled Mobile Transporter |
TWR | Thrust-to-Weight Ratio |
Jargon | Definition |
---|---|
Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
deep throttling | Operating an engine at much lower thrust than normal |
iron waffle | Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin" |
NOTE: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 12 acronyms.
[Thread #12999 for this sub, first seen 1st Jul 2024, 02:55]
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It may be that the RCS has no trouble aligning the booster.
at this phase of flight all control will be done through engine gimballing. rcs is only for high alt maneuvering and gridfins fir high speed in atmo.
too chaotic with the chopsticks in motion, then bouncing and vibrating during the catch.
I feel like the ground under where the booster is going to be caught needs to be reinforced.
The same ground that can hold 33 engines at 90% power, suddenly can't hold 1to3 engines at lower rate?
mmmmmm...
Actually it’s not ‘the same ground’ as the booster would come down not over the launch Mount, but off to one side, where it’s normally picked off of the SPMT before moving ‘up’ and then the one side, to then be mounted.
[The booster catch is] off to one side, where it’s normally picked off of the SPMT
This makes sense because it
- allows a free selection of catch altitudes, even down to engines below table height.
- avoids table damage in case of a fuel spill on engine shutdown
- limits the consequences of a missed catch
But what is the evidence so far that off-center catching is actually the case? Have there been any off-center test article tests?
BTW. In a past comment, I linked to a Maps view of the tower to help visualize available approach azimuths.
- https://www.google.fr/maps/@25.996427,-97.1540848,146m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu (If necessary, switch to aerial view with the button that shows on the lower left in Western language versions)
BTW IMO, its great that Elon replied to the camera request because it demonstrates confidence in landing outcomes, so is positive about the simulated tower landing precision in IFT-4.I wonder who decides what is sensitive IP data and what is ITAR. Regarding tower catches, we're really on new territory here.
It’s no more ‘off-center’ than being over the launch Mount would be. They are simply different operational positions of the chopsticks.
Your point (2) falls short - what if the catch fails and the booster comes crashing down to the ground ? Although your (3) hints at this:
Well, where the SPMT drops off the Booster/Starship, hitting the ground would be less of a problem than hitting the launch Mount mechanism would be.
what if the catch fails and the booster comes crashing down to the ground ?
There should be as little remaining fuel and its possible. Even when the software thinks it has has detected a good latch, it should (IMO) order a throttled-down engine to burn the residue down to the limit of what is required for a clean engine shutdown.
A crash at that point (say due to a mechanical failure) is essentially methane burning in slightly oxygen-enriched atmospheric air. This is progressive combustion taking place above the impact point, the unburned gases being wafted upward by thermal convection. Just going from very limited experience of fires I've witnessed, this is a low-temperature fire that would cause pretty superficial damage, even within the tower lattice.
where the SPMT drops off the Booster/Starship, hitting the ground would be less of a problem than hitting the launch Mount mechanism would be.
and intuitions suggests this is where the catch should be done.
I am thinking more about 200 tonnes toppling over..
200 tonnes toppling over..
If 200 tonnes fall from more than a dozen meters, wouldn't it burst and collapse?
There'd be a fire much as seen on the low altitude flight tests, but it should be a lo temperature one as I suggested above. Anticipating the risk of this kind of fire would help explain the fact of building the tower on a concrete base instead of girder sections from the ground up.
I would just hate to have something like ift1 happen
I think it’s easy to forget it’s not the same booster that took off as well. It weighs a whole Lot less.
So it's got to survive the launch?
booster has done well, overall. arms are spread wide at launch.
Mechazilla, his arms wide open.
I don't think the tower had any issues in ift4
cool, can we get in portrait?
No, I want to see the whole exhaust plume. Don't need to see an extra few metres of steel.
He really needed to have his arm twisted on that one.