I know, another Starship post, but these drone shots are awesome!!!!
- Thread starter glhs837
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LightRoasted
If I may ...
For your consideration ..
Well that is a different way to assemble a rocket.
Well that is a different way to assemble a rocket.
glhs837
Power with Control
When you are shooting for same day turnaround, you need to be creative. The plan is to catch both stages with that same tower when the come back. Not this first time of course. This first one, the first stage will do a "water landing" out at sea that will test its ability to both hover and rotate to align itself with the tower. The second stage will achieve orbital height bot not velocity, going far enough around the earth to renter west of Hawaii and perform a water landing of its own 60 miles offshore.
With this assembly method, the stages travel out to the pad vertical on commercial SPMTs, then are lifted onto the launch mount/first stage respectively. These early days are going slow. but eventually they should be able to stack a full stack in less than an hour or so. These two time lapses show it a bit better. Right now a second Orbital Launch Tower (OLT) is mostly assembled at Kennedy and the framework for a third is being built there as well. So they are pretty settled on the base design.
Interestingly, the motor that pulls the cable to hoist the trolley up and down the tower is a piece they removed from one of the oil rigs they bought, called a drawworks.
LightRoasted
If I may ...
jrt_ms1995
Well-Known Member
If only our Government were involved; we'd have colonies on Pluto by now! 
Clem72
Well-Known Member
From a safe distance....
glhs837
Power with Control
Best guess now is about two weeks....... Until then, theres this render, which is pretty cool
LightRoasted
If I may ...
For your consideration ...
Very inspiring. But why animate the destruction on re-entry? Weird that we're for rooting for Musk, and not the USA and NASA as in the past. Or is Musk a proxy for the USA and NASA?
Very inspiring. But why animate the destruction on re-entry? Weird that we're for rooting for Musk, and not the USA and NASA as in the past. Or is Musk a proxy for the USA and NASA?
glhs837
Power with Control
We're cheering him because he's leapt out ahead of everyone. Everyone else was content to just shovel endless piles of cash at the Old Space companies for expendable rockets with no real plan to get people out there. Congress liked it as a jobs program, the contractors loved the money, NASA was getting what they could. He's actually moving forward with plans to establish a no crap continued human presence in space. NASA sorta on board as they are paying for both an in orbit refuelling demo with Starship and a lunar landing variant.
As for showing the reentry destruction, it's really 50/50 for that part. Super Heavy, the Booster, that's the easy part, other than having more and more powerful motors than have ever flown before. Landing it, that's an extension of something they've done more than 150 times.
But Starship, the second stage? That thing has so much new stuff. Reentry with stainless steel. New heat shield tiles that are clipped on. Not glued. Huge movable control surfaces. Completely different shape than has ever reentered before. If it makes it this first time it would be amazing, but most folks don't really expect it.
Good thing is that there are literally two more in the wings ready to go. Unlike old space, they are really planning on assembling these like Boeing does aircraft.
As for showing the reentry destruction, it's really 50/50 for that part. Super Heavy, the Booster, that's the easy part, other than having more and more powerful motors than have ever flown before. Landing it, that's an extension of something they've done more than 150 times.
But Starship, the second stage? That thing has so much new stuff. Reentry with stainless steel. New heat shield tiles that are clipped on. Not glued. Huge movable control surfaces. Completely different shape than has ever reentered before. If it makes it this first time it would be amazing, but most folks don't really expect it.
Good thing is that there are literally two more in the wings ready to go. Unlike old space, they are really planning on assembling these like Boeing does aircraft.
Hopefully not like the 737 Max.
glhs837
Power with Control
Yeah, more the speed than the quality.