glhs837
Power with Control
Thought this shot was cool. So that giant "chopstick" arms that are used to lift both stages of Starship off of the transport mounts and onto the launch mount are powered by a piece of salvage from an offshore oil rig called a "drawworks". AC motor, really strong, and very fast. When the drill head is moving relative to the rig, the drawworks and reverse direction very fast. keeping the drill pipe under control.
All of those cables you see go back up to the top of the tower and eventually end up back at the bottom at the drawworks. When Super Heavy (Stage 1) comes back to be caught by the chopsticks, the drawworks are what's going to allow those arms to settle in a controlled way as they take the multi-hundred ton weight of the near empty booster. This of how a parent catches a child they have tossed upward, your arms moving downward as you take the weight of the falling child. Same basic thing. And all of those forces go through that one huge clevis.
This animation shows it although nobody knows it it hover and shift over, or come in directly between the arms. Might blow up, might not, Excitement in any case.
All of those cables you see go back up to the top of the tower and eventually end up back at the bottom at the drawworks. When Super Heavy (Stage 1) comes back to be caught by the chopsticks, the drawworks are what's going to allow those arms to settle in a controlled way as they take the multi-hundred ton weight of the near empty booster. This of how a parent catches a child they have tossed upward, your arms moving downward as you take the weight of the falling child. Same basic thing. And all of those forces go through that one huge clevis.
This animation shows it although nobody knows it it hover and shift over, or come in directly between the arms. Might blow up, might not, Excitement in any case.
