Starship 42 successfully CAUGHT by the Mechazilla chopsticks after a day in orbit — becoming the first time in history an orbital rocket has ever been fully recovered

[u/ChiefLeef22]

Unbelievable stuff

[u/mlkhighschool]

This thing shot up into the sky 24 hours ago, orbited Earth 14 times at Mach 22+ (20,000+ km/h), flew back down to Earth, and landed itself at the same tower it had launched from a day ago.

Such an amazing feat of human ingenuity and collaboration to make this happen.

[u/CuriousQuerent → u/mlkhighschool]

Also, it's fucking huge. We really shouldn't forget how massive it is. Doesn't look it on the screen. Hell of a feat.

[u/Snuffy1717 → u/CuriousQuerent]

407 feet is more than two Tower of Terrors stacked atop each other.

Edit - Jokes on everyone, I’m just a Canadian who likes Tower of Terror xD

[u/ravens-n-roses → u/Snuffy1717]

Americans will use any measurement to to avoid using metric ;p

[u/FeCurtain11 → u/ravens-n-roses]

Two kinds of countries. Those that measure things in “towers of terror” and those that haven’t landed skyscrapers from space :P

[u/agitatedprisoner → u/FeCurtain11]

I believe the UN has declared the banana the international standard of measurement.

[u/Equivalent_Pen_9403 → u/agitatedprisoner]

About 651 bananas.

That's.... well...

[u/RCEden → u/Equivalent_Pen_9403]

What can one rocket cost Michael, 651x10 dollars?

[u/Lochcelious → u/FeCurtain11]

I mean, the people that made this happen are using metric, so...

[u/GayRacoon69 → u/Lochcelious]

No I'm pretty sure the spaceX rocket scientists used towers of terror as their official unit

[u/MaxPlanck_420 → u/Lochcelious]

I'm pretty sure they used both, not by choice either. I tell you this as a PCB designer who would love to one day be able to do a design where everything was metric. We are getting close but I'm still not quite there yet. I'm sure there are plenty of other parts of this engineering marvel where some unit system that isn't metric has pissed off an engineer.

[u/dern_the_hermit → u/ravens-n-roses]

It's .078 the length of a Star Destroyer, the best Imperial unit.

[u/thatvassarguy08 → u/dern_the_hermit]

Victory or Imperial Class?

[u/LegitimateGift1792 → u/ravens-n-roses]

It is just under 2/3 of a furlong???

[u/PlasticBag-ForA-Head → u/Snuffy1717]

anything but the metric system... 🤣

[u/willyolio → u/Snuffy1717]

sorry, I can't understand that unless you convert it into refrigeratorball fields.

[u/Seanspeed → u/Snuffy1717]

To be clear, this section is 'only' 171ft tall.

Just a 15 story tall building basically.

[u/H-K_47 → u/CuriousQuerent]

52 metres for the Ship alone! They're deadass sending skyscrapers to space then catching them with chopsticks.

[u/1LizardWizard → u/H-K_47]

124 meters is the total length inclusive of the booster. The ship itself is like 50 meters. Still a very impressive feat

[u/H-K_47 → u/1LizardWizard]

WHOOPS mixed up my copy pastes. You're right, thanks.

[u/Real_Establishment56 → u/CuriousQuerent]

It’s also pretty agile, I mean it looks like it gets tossed around like it’s an empty beer can. Which goes to show how incredibly powerful that engine is. And don’t forget the gimbal it’s attached to.

[u/cjameshuff → u/Real_Establishment56]

it looks like it gets tossed around like it’s an empty beer can

They have almost exactly the same bulk density, in fact.

[u/BenignBot → u/CuriousQuerent]

Well, that looks like a giant… JOHNSON!

[u/CrazyEnginer → u/mlkhighschool]

And only after less than 4 years of full stack test flights, incredible rate for space industry

[u/LoosePersonality9372 → u/CrazyEnginer]

We can have any idea about musk and his companies but it is a feat that is pretty hard to dismiss.

[u/xSTSxZerglingOne → u/LoosePersonality9372]

SpaceX is cool. Elon Musk sucks. Those two facts can exist independent of one another since he isn't doing any of the actual work.

[u/twinbee → u/xSTSxZerglingOne]

Robert Zubrin, famous aerospace engineer, founder of the Mars Society:

"When I met Elon it was apparent to me that although he had a scientific mind and he understood scientific principles, he did not know anything about rockets. Nothing. That was in 2001. By 2007 he knew everything about rockets - he really knew everything, in detail."

[u/d8_thc → u/twinbee]

reddit hates this, but it's true.

you can be smart and have bad politics.

[u/SouthFromGranada → u/d8_thc]

To be fair the fathers of the American space programme famously had quite iffy politics.

[u/zoobrix → u/SouthFromGranada]

If by iffy you mean Wernher von Braun who personally supervised factories full of slaves making V-1 and V-2 rockets for the Nazis yes, pretty iffy indeed.

[u/Kirk_Kerman → u/twinbee]

SpaceX engineers are working 80+ hr weeks. Musk tweets every few minutes almost around the clock and is nominally in charge of several large corporations. He is not doing any fucking work on the rockets.

[u/mfb- → u/Kirk_Kerman]

It was his decision to switch from carbon fiber to steel.

He pushed for the "chopstick" landing method.

If you expect him to personally weld things together, yeah obviously he isn't going to do that.

[u/Novinhophobe → u/mfb-]

He pushed for the cybertruck to look the way it did, too. The fact that the engineers behind everything make it work doesn’t somehow mean that his way is the best way of doing things. In fact that’s the basic principle that any engineer, no matter the industry, has to abide by. There’s always someone from management putting arbitrary limits which then require extensive engineering effort to overcome.

[u/YannisBE → u/xSTSxZerglingOne]

Fully agree with the first part. Although Tom Mueller, who built the Merlin engines and did early work on Raptor, has been quite vocal about Musk's involvement in SpaceX's management and engineering efforts. Of course he doesn't do the dirty work, but the notion that he does nothing at all is also not true.

[u/ScarcityCultural1699 → u/xSTSxZerglingOne]

You’d be surprised how many design decisions are specifically elons. I don’t know any engineer who thought that landing procedure was a good idea including space x engineers. If it becomes routine, it’ll convince everyone. Still a ways from that.

[u/TheMiracleLigament → u/mlkhighschool]

And it deployed 26 satellites!

[u/H-K_47 → u/TheMiracleLigament]

Equivalent to TEN Falcon 9 launches. The scale of this thing is incomprehensible.

[u/Lunarfrog2 → u/TheMiracleLigament]

That's incredible, the payload on these is nuts too

[u/H_Industries → u/mlkhighschool]

Its very cool, but mach 22 is a meaningless number for orbital altitudes, mach is definitionally defined relative to the speed of sound, there's not enough air for sound to carry that high, individual molecules are on average hundreds of meters apart, it's effectively vacuum.

Just say roughly 17,324 mph (27,880 km/h or 7.744 km/s). which is the orbital velocity of 171 circular orbit (thus the roughly since 42's orbit wasn't perfectly circular or that exact altitude)

[u/Dark074 → u/H_Industries]

I think Mach is used often when describe spacecraft as a way to convey to layman how fast something is. Pretty much every know what the speed of sound is, like the speed of a fighter jet or a bit faster then a commercial airline. It's much easier to understand 22 times faster then a airliner then 27000kph

[u/MrHyperion_ → u/Dark074]

Normal person has no relation to even Mach 1

[u/YetiSpaghetti24 → u/MrHyperion_]

Yes they do. Fireworks and thunder to name a couple things.

[u/Uninvalidated → u/mlkhighschool]

Mach speed is the ratio of an object's speed to the local speed of sound in the surrounding medium. Mach is not a good measurement for objects flying in space due to the lack of medium for sound to propagate through out there.

Edit: Yeah, downvote ahead. It doesn't make using Mach, that require an atmosphere, a viable measurement method outside the atmosphere no matter what. But it's classic Reddit bias. You liked the initial post so you don't care if it's incorrect or not.

[u/Dark074 → u/Uninvalidated]

Yeah for example, the SR71 went about 2200mph. If that was at sea level, that only be mach 2.9 but since it was way higher, it got up to Mach 3.3

[u/avboden]

They actually did. It shouldn't be underestimated how crazy this is. This is one of the greatest feats in human engineering in history.

[u/Cybertrucker01 → u/avboden]

Despite all the crazy shit going on around the world, it fills me with so much joy and optimism for the future when I see such undeniable physical displays of human capability pushing boundaries.

Advances in chips, flops and tokens just don’t compare to the visceral awe of such tangible advances you can see with your own eyes.

God I wish I am fortunate enough to one day witness this with my own eyes.

[u/h0ckey87 → u/Cybertrucker01]

At the head of it, you have someone who is creating the very problems you're alluding to. Not to be a downer, but it's important contextualize

[u/No-Programmer-8642 → u/h0ckey87]

It's true, thats why its important to realise it was the scientists that made this happen not musk. The boss needs us, we don't need the boss.

[u/willyolio → u/No-Programmer-8642]

he still gets all the money though, and he's using the money to buy elections anyways.

[u/RedditFuelsMyDepress → u/willyolio]

He spent close to 500 million on the midterms, but dems still won lol.

[u/willyolio → u/RedditFuelsMyDepress]

Yes, and that's how unpopular he is right now. Elon is basically the archbishop of the Church of Trump, spent half a billion to buy popularity, and everyone hates him. He's going to keep doing it though, all that SpaceX money promoting the anti-science, anti-education, anti-NASA administration because it makes him personally richer.

[u/thederevolutions → u/No-Programmer-8642]

Do you think space flight would still be at this point if musk never came onto the scene? I’m completely unfamiliar with the industry.

[u/Seanspeed → u/Cybertrucker01]

I get it, but learning about microprocessors and how they're designed and made is insanity. Unlike with rockets which are big and relatively uncommon, we hugely take for granted the absurd amount of processing power that an individual person can possess these days because we're just so used to it. Our thin little pocket phones have a tiny little 100mm² chip of layered metal that contains BILLIONS of carefully designed, controllable transistors that make everything about our modern age possible. Literally 100,000,000+ transistors per mm² in some cases.

[u/clickfornudes → u/avboden]

It seems like an incremental improvement which is why it’s not so widely celebrated, right? (“Incremental” with a grain of salt)

[u/avboden → u/clickfornudes]

Yeah, spaceX has normalized the insane

[u/nekonight → u/avboden]

7 years from the little steel can that hopped across a starbase that is barely more than an empty field to catching a 2nd stage of a fully reusable heavy lift rocket design.

[u/Seanspeed → u/avboden]

I will say it's very hard to ever top that first Falcon Heavy dual booster landing.

It looked like some shot from a sci fi movie.

[u/Nixon4Prez → u/clickfornudes]

Yeah people who don't know about spaceflight are going to think 'oh, they landed another rocket, neat' not realizing that landing an orbital second stage is orders of magnitude more incredible

[u/jyunga → u/Nixon4Prez]

This person is me. So help me out a bit for understanding something. There was another stage under this with fuel? Did it landing as well?

[u/Nixon4Prez → u/jyunga]

Yes, and not this time. Most rockets have two stages - a large booster to get it part-way into orbit, then a second stage to finish the job. The first stage failed to land this time, though they've caught it on other flights. Recovering the second stage is so much more difficult because it has to survive orbital re-entry at 26000km/hr, where superheated plasma tears everything apart unless it's perfectly shielded. The actual 'landing' part is much simpler than surviving the way down.

[u/Coal_Burner_Inserter → u/clickfornudes]

I think it's best to put it as an incremental improvement to a great leap forward. Semi-reusable rockets changed the game, gave SpaceX the dominance it has with the massive savings that not tossing a rocket each time you use it gives you. But fully-reusable rockets? It's only finishing what semi-reusables set out to do, but with the caveat of it eliminating the last major cost in rocket flight.

Think of it like a two-headed train (as in, engines on both ends).

First, anytime you send a train ANYWHERE, the cargo will (sometimes) arrive, but both engines are blown up doing it.

Then, you develop the technology to only have to blow up the front engine, and the second engine can drive itself back.

SpaceX just pulled off the train going to a destination, and then coming back, and all you have to do in the interim is make sure everything is in good shape before you reload the cargo and send it back out.

(Mind you, they only sort-of pulled this off. You'll note the 'second engine', the booster, drove itself back... and they purposefully blew it up somewhere safe instead of risking it blowing up the train station itself)

[u/cjameshuff → u/Coal_Burner_Inserter]

This is kind of backwards though. Partial reuse is still expending half the vehicle, you still have to build an upper stage for every launch, as well as replace the occasional damaged fairing. Full reuse takes the expended hardware per launch all the way to zero. That's a huge expense and logistics constraint that is now just gone. The only consumable is now the propellant, which costs a fraction of a percent of the cost of the vehicle.

[u/rooktakesqueen → u/clickfornudes]

They've proved out the hardest part of making a 100% reusable rocket. Falcon 9's first stage was reusable and that changed basically everything about spaceflight, but the upper stages were still either left in space or deorbited and burned up. Being able to reuse both the booster and the upper stage, especially a vehicle with this much payload, is just as revolutionary a step.

[u/Responsible-Cut-7993 → u/clickfornudes]

“At Space X we specialize in converting things from impossible to late”- Elon Musk

[u/lotny → u/avboden]

To think that we progressed from stone tools to this.

[u/LoosePersonality9372 → u/lotny]

And in the future we will look back at these vehicles like we look back at the stone tools now.

[u/scatterlite → u/avboden]

It really is a big moment. Almost certainly the first of many many future flights.

[u/msherretz → u/avboden]

They launched, orbited, AND CAUGHT something the size of the Statue of Liberty (or, the size of the orange tank from the Shuttle)

Freaking amazing

[u/Latrodectus1990]

Welcome to HISTORY!!!

This looked so easy, but i still cannot believe it they made it from first attempt

This is just unbelievable!!!

Congrats to whole SpaceX team!!!

[u/Shitsinhandandclaps → u/Latrodectus1990]

Well, almost all of them. In spite of one of them they do amazing things.

[u/chi-minhs-hoe → u/Shitsinhandandclaps]

Yeah, it sucks that he has to stain the work these people do

[u/SpotIsALie]

God I wish we could, as a world, re-allocate all the resources we spend on war and use it to propagate science and space exploration.

[u/imzwho → u/SpotIsALie]

Unfortunately we got a Cyberpunk dystopia coming when we all hoped for Star Trek.

[u/OrangeRising → u/imzwho]

Well we haven't had Star Trek's third world war yet so give it time.

[u/SteelWillyz → u/imzwho]

lol do u realize Star trek went through world word 3 and Eugenic wars for decades right? Hundreds of millions of people died. Not sure I want that future.

[u/ISB-Dev → u/SteelWillyz]

Maybe you have to have that future to get a star trek future eventually.

[u/Saquonathan → u/ISB-Dev]

The problem is you don't know which faction will win the final (Earth) wars in our universe. A Star Trek future might be a statistical outlier.

[u/GnarlyNarwhalNoms → u/SteelWillyz]

The Bell Riots were cannonically in 2024. So we're a little overdue. 

[u/MetallicGray → u/SpotIsALie]

It's inconceivable what could have been achieved by now if just the US alone spent the last few decades redirecting just half of what has been spent on war, bombs, munitions, warships, fighter jets, drones, missiles, and all the stuff just designed to kill other people to space exploration and technology. Not to mention all the other things like power grids that could support demand ten fold, healthcare advancements and funding, 5000 mile range electric vehicles, etc.

[u/ArtificialHalo → u/MetallicGray]

But then a handful of people couldn't get richer than entire countries :'( and that would be such a shame

But yeah the human potential is amazing in space and technology

[u/adamdj96 → u/MetallicGray]

I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but it should be recognized that the military spending is not a sunk cost that simply diverts resources from space exploration to something else entirely. Without the impetus of the threat of war, it’s highly unlikely we would see any of the space exploration advances we’ve seen to-date, this launch included. 

V2s and Germans bombing England kicked off modern rocketry in WW2. The space race, aside from being a soft war between the US and USSR, included the use of literal Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles as the first orbital launch vehicles. GPS was first designed and implemented for military navigation purposes. 

I doubt entire societies of people would’ve been convinced to divert 1 of every 20 (EDIT: probably a max of more like $1 out of every $40 to $50) of the dollars they earned to invest in a novel, unproven, science-fiction industry (without the threat of “or else the other guys will kill you!”), especially when the returns on investment really weren’t seen in non-military applications early on.

[u/MetallicGray → u/adamdj96]

Sure, but it's an inefficient way to achieve the progress. I guess my "ideal scenario" also requires that a society just have a passion and drive for technological advancement for the sake of technological advancement as motivation. You make a good point that a motivation is needed for a lot of technological advancements, and that almost always is war or money. There's relatively very little research done for the sake of knowledge and exploration. Good point.

A more realistic alternative is probably the infrastructure and social things I mentioned. Power grids, cheaper energy, healthcare advancements, etc. There is a social pressure and will to improve those things moreso than abstract space exploration.

[u/Deodorized → u/SpotIsALie]

Reallocating all the war funds globally to green energy once, for one year, would fully prevent all future wars that would originate from oil dependancy.

[u/ToMorrowsEnd → u/Deodorized]

But that would make 4 people not as wealthy. Why wont someone think of the billionaires?

[u/purplepatch]

I loved the music they started playing on the stream. Such confidence. Imagine if it had blown up the tower to that 😂 

[u/JUDGE_YOUR_TYPO → u/purplepatch]

I was so nervous. The moment the song came on it was completely assuaged. Like there was just no way they weren't going to execute after playing that song.

[u/bdougherty → u/JUDGE_YOUR_TYPO]

Should have kept the ship catchphrase in mind: Don't Panic!

[u/Mooman-Chew → u/purplepatch]

I missed the stream and thought it had been added post production

[u/Kuriente → u/Mooman-Chew]

Yeah they did that shit live! Similar to when they played Starman by Bowie during Falcon Heavy payload sequence. They really make a show of it when they feel they're ready for a huge milestone moment.

[u/H-K_47]

The longest an active cryogenic upper stage has EVER spent in orbit, and it performed flawlessly. No issues with the deorbit or anything! Then a perfect catch.

It looks nearly flawless at the tower, like they could just stack it on a new booster, fuel it back up, and launch it again. Insane.

This is the future.

[u/Seanspeed → u/H-K_47]

Yea, V3 has got the juice.

I admit I had gotten nervous before about Starship's development. Obviously still a ways to go, but this feels like it's on course to being a proper game changing workhorse.

[u/Fredasa → u/Seanspeed]

Honestly, I've long felt that the biggest hurdle they'd need to overcome is the tiles. I genuinely felt it would remain unresolvable, and potentially kill any thought of a reusable second stage.

They still break apart. It'll probably always be that way. But I am completely confident now that it won't matter. All they need to do is keep a lot of second stages in queue, refurbishing on an assembly line. The things survive to landing, and that was the only thing that ever mattered. The refurbishment will, blatantly, reach a point where it's quick and painless, too. Definitely also helps that the cost of making Starship stacks is dirt cheap.

[u/TheDude-Esquire → u/H-K_47]

In terms of reuse, they may. IIRC, they didn't relaunch the first landed dragon, but they did relaunch the second one. Point being, the time between first landing, and first reuse was really short.

[u/raalic]

This is the craziest space-related thing I have ever witnessed, and I feel like it was barely a blip on the national news. The general public just has zero clue how impossible this is.

[u/MrParticular79 → u/raalic]

Everyone hates Elon. People just think space x is a government leech and they don’t understand at all what they are doing and accomplishing here.

[u/gromulint → u/MrParticular79]

Two things that can be true at the same time: 1) Space X is accomplishing incredible feats and 2) their CEO is a vile buffoon who has damaged democracy by constantly attempting and often succeeding at buying elections (among a long list of damaging and disgusting things he has done: DOGE, Grok misinformation, etc).

[u/holographicman → u/gromulint]

This right here, it doesnt have to be one or the other

[u/kermode → u/gromulint]

Elon's reckless, careless, USAID cuts are estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of some of the poorest people on Earth. He's a scumbag. The company is dope though.

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/

[u/Grayly → u/MrParticular79]

Because Elon deserves it and does himself no favors.

The team assembled at SpaceX are obviously great. They would be great without him.

[u/Nixon4Prez → u/MrParticular79]

I really dislike Elon but as a space nerd my god the discourse around SpaceX is obnoxious. Criticism is fine but you need to know what you're talking about and most of it is coming from clueless people with no knowledge about spaceflight.

[u/MrTagnan → u/Nixon4Prez]

I understand completely, drives me nuts how often I see such confidently wrong criticism. See the cacophony of “see it exploded again” on any of the prior ship splashdowns…

[u/PixelBrewery → u/MrParticular79]

Elon did it to himself. He could have just stayed focused on making his companies accomplish great things, but he had to align himself with ugly, divisive politics and inject himself into geopolitics.

[u/dingo_xd → u/raalic]

The next company that will manage a similar feat will likely take over a decade from today

[u/RocketVerse → u/raalic]

They were gearing up to make it a huge story if it exploded

[u/CurtisLeow]

It’s like something out of science fiction. It reminds me of the Space Shuttle. But they’re recovering the entire second stage, propellant tanks and all. That’s the future of orbital rockets.

[u/ResidentPositive4122 → u/CurtisLeow]

It’s like something out of science fiction.

There's a scene in The Expanse that looks somewhat similar (sans the tower).

There's also footage of one of the very first belly flop tests (just ship launching itself up a few km) where they had a camera looking up, and it looked like the "Adama maneuver" from BSG.

[u/Any-Calligrapher2866 → u/ResidentPositive4122]

We’re seeing the birth of actual spaceships here. This tech will make going to space far more cheap if used correctly.

[u/nosmelc → u/CurtisLeow]

It's funny how 50's science fiction got the future rocket ship design right.

[u/JapariParkRanger]

Just incredible seeing it come out of the clouds.

[u/Joezev98 → u/JapariParkRanger]

One day they're gonna catch a Ship and we'll have a tracking shot all the way from space down to earth. It'll be glorious.

[u/ispshadow]

I don’t even know the right words to describe the feeling while watching this happen. Those engineers should be feeling really proud of themselves right now. Absolutely incredible

[u/beedub82]

If this happened when I was a kid in the 1990s, this is a moment my family would have watched on television and I would remember it forever. With everyone connected to the internet now watching so much stupid junk, I feel like it is barely notable outside of this sub and a few news sites. This is absolutely astounding!!

[u/GalFisk → u/beedub82]

I watched the Everyday Astronaut stream, and he had lots of families writing in that they were watching together.

[u/IsChristianAwake]

Genuine chills. Can’t believe we’re witnessing history in the making here. Bravo Space X 🙏🏾

[u/newadidashypeman]

Stack it up and re-fly that thing

[u/SpiderSlitScrotums → u/newadidashypeman]

That’s the big question and next major milestone. Once that happens, the cost of mass to orbit is going to be decimated.

[u/Vox-Machi-Buddies → u/SpiderSlitScrotums]

Even decimated, taken literally, is an understatement. Decimated is to reduce by 10%. Starship is aimed at reducing cost to orbit by 90%.

[u/givemeyours0ul → u/Vox-Machi-Buddies]

I don't know Latin but I'm going with nunicetigecimated

[u/albinobluesheep → u/newadidashypeman]

Really curious how the heat tiles fair on multiple entries. The shuttles heat tiles got re-used, but only after a full inspection and many of them being replaced between flights.

[u/Grayly → u/albinobluesheep]

Right now they don’t fair any better.

It’s the real issue that hasn’t been solved yet. You can still do a heavy launch cadence because it’s otherwise cheaper to build than the shuttle. But if you gotta replace the tiles every time, it doesn’t save much.

[u/Monomette → u/Grayly]

Helps that every tile on Starship isn't unique. There're several different types but for the most part they're all the same. Unlike STS.

[u/Vox-Machi-Buddies → u/newadidashypeman]

I have to imagine Elon is pushing for this already. When they got the first Falcon 9 booster back, he was pushing for a static fire right away - like before engineers even had time to inspect it.

Now as then, I'd guess they do static fire it in the next few weeks, but then cooler heads will prevail and the argument will get made that it's far more valuable to do in-depth inspections rather than risk losing the vehicle and all the potential findings on a re-flight.

[u/This-Manufacturer388]

Greatest engineering feat of all time, Apollo rival it because it was done in 60s but they just launched and propulsively caught a building

[u/st4nkyFatTirebluntz → u/[deleted]]

i'd say space shuttle was just as fully recovered as this one was -- for now. it's just, once they actually get the booster catch, it'll actually truly be 100% recovery, whereas shuttle never even tried that part

[u/cyborgsnowflake → u/st4nkyFatTirebluntz]

I mean they did recover the booster. Just in another flight. Just need to put it together. Whereas Space Shuttle never recovered certain parts.

[u/d1rr → u/st4nkyFatTirebluntz]

The shuttle recovered it's boosters. It didn't recover the fuel tank.

[u/Aggressive_Let2085 → u/[deleted]]

No, because the rocket used to launch the shuttle isn’t orbital nor is it recovered like starship. Only the shuttle returns (the SRBs are recovered but in the ocean)

[u/bill_cipher1996 → u/[deleted]]

Not fully, the large orange tank burned up in the atmosphere. Only the shuttle and the booster got recovered

[u/Northwindlowlander → u/bill_cipher1996]

Sure, but here the booster was lost too. It feels like someone wrote the headline before the actual mission and forgot to change it when they aborted the booster catch.

[u/08148694 → u/Northwindlowlander]

Booster catch has been demonstrated already so we know it’s possible for them to achieve full reusability

[u/Mhan00 → u/bill_cipher1996]

That's not to mention the insane amount of refurbishment that they had to do to get the stuff they did get back back to a re-usable state. I've read that they probably spent more money refurbishing than it would have cost to just build new stages to use every launch. We don't know how much it will cost SpaceX to refurbish Starship and the Super Heavy, but their track record with Falcon 9 has been good, and theoretically the Super Heavy is just a Falcon 9 booster scaled up. Nobody knows what kind of work will need to be done on Starship yet because obviously this is the first one they've recovered without it splashing down into the ocean first.

[u/Dzsaffar → u/[deleted]]

I think no because the external tank is not recovered.

[u/quarter_belt → u/Dzsaffar]

Neither was the first stage this time

[u/Darth_Quaider → u/[deleted]]

Nah. The shuttle is recovered but rockets and boosters are wasted. This is fully recoverable.

[u/Dark074 → u/Darth_Quaider]

The SRBs were recovered at sea via parachutes but they are barely considered reusable due to the water damage they would receive from the ocean. It cost a out as much to make a new booster then refurbish a used one

[u/Lazylion2]

Insane, the way it approached looked like its wayy off :D

amazing

[u/Nixon4Prez → u/Lazylion2]

Yeah they want it to come in off target so that if it fails it doesn't fall on anything important.

[u/EOE97]

SpaceX has single handedly revolutionized space travel and satellite internet.

[u/Mhan00]

Actually insane. If they can start re-using the booster and the Ship, that is a significant step change in our ability to reach the stars. Hearing the emotion in the voice of the broadcasters while watching the stream reflected my own feelings as a middle aged man who grew up devouring every science fiction book I could get my hands on.

[u/NowThatsMalarkey]

Reddit luddites ain’t gonna like this. 😂

[u/Careful-Condition869]

Holy hell, I really can't believe they managed to pull it off. One of the greatest feats of engineering ever made!

[u/A_brief_passerby]

Arguably the most impressive example of aerospace engineering ever accomplished by humans.

Once they get it as reliable and mundane as Falcon 9 launches, it's going to drive the cost of delivering mass to orbit down to the 100s of dollars per kilo, instead of the 1000s it is right now.

A few more tests flights and improvements and we will officially have the most capable and cost effective rocket ever developed by nearly an entire order of magnitude.

Some real nerds over there at SpaceX, and I say that with the utmost possible respect.

[u/Senior_Astronomer_26]

It is straight out of sci-fi. Now, it is proven that it is possible to recover all stages of the rocket.

[u/LoosePersonality9372 → u/Senior_Astronomer_26]

And this is only the first step towards the stars.

[u/GalacticScale]

lol I love the music, “baby come back”

[u/wimpires]

Honestly, the sometimes I cannot fathom just how smart those SpaceX people are. Absolutely amazing class of their own. Wow. 

[u/agitatedprisoner → u/wimpires]

So many people putting in so much effort to do what's never been done before, it's quite a thing to see. I feel the same way about cutting edge lithography. More complicated machines have never been made.

[u/Mr_Gobbles]

Just WOW. I think ship 42 (flight 15) has earned it's spot next to starhopper.

[u/PlasticBag-ForA-Head]

wow. thats beyond incredible. and the music is a hilarious choice.

[u/fencethe900th → u/PlasticBag-ForA-Head]

I was thinking it was just a classic song that they chose, since I was too focused on the landing ops to think about what song it actually was. Then the landing synced with the chorus and I laughed. 

[u/theonetruebruh]

Strap in for a whole new era of spaceflight!! We've just witnessed an important historical event

[u/idreviewer]

I still need three attempts to parallel park a sedan with a backup camera, and they just caught a 17-story spaceship out of orbit with giant chopsticks.

[u/_Yellow_13]

Mind blowing.
Incredible.

[u/LookAtMaxwell]

Okay, that is incredible.

What an exciting time for space flight.

[u/morfraen]

Wonder how long it'll be before we can just refuel and take off again without it having to be practically rebuilt first.

[u/ArrogantCube → u/morfraen]

The whole idea is that this vehicle can be turned around in a few hours at most, requiring only superficial inspections. It's not there yet, but looking at how this Ship landed it's certainly on its way

[u/nekonight → u/morfraen]

Look at the heat shield even compared to 2 flights ago (the one that survived the landing and was towed back) the damage is almost non existent. There looks to be no missing tiles and very little discoloration. 

[u/wharausernameitwas]

One day noone will be amazed by this, just as we (tbh I still am) are not amazed when the airplanes take off.

[u/yoruneko]

Impressive how clean it was compared to previous ones, like almost no damage from reentry compared to the previous ones. Thermal shielding has really inproved a lot

[u/Steve490]

Remember this moment everyone. This is history!

[u/byup123]

Congrats to the entire team of SpaceX. What a historic achievement for humanity.

Things will only move faster from here until we get back to the moon and eventually take our first steps on Mars.

Many more accomplishments to come for the greatest company on planet Earth 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[u/CosmicRuin]

Absolute milestone step achieved in human spaceflight and our future of living and working in space! Congrats to the SpaceX team!

[u/Rare_Polnareff]

Probably the most insane thing I have seen in my lifetime. This deserves a ton of credit

[u/Dutch_1815]

Ship 42 :) the answer to everything

[u/SnitGTS]

I know they’re not going to, but Ship 42 looks good enough to stack on another booster and launch again… wow!

[u/StarpoweredSteamship]

Well... Halfly fully recovered. The other half was sent to Davy Jones.

[u/androk]

That’s sci-fi becoming reality. Chills

[u/Teegs59]

I remember watching the first Falcon Heavy launch years ago. Now look where spaceX is at! Its so incredible watching history be made. Space is freaking awesome and so are rockets!

[u/curtis_perrin]

Amazing! That was so incredible

[u/apbod]

Wow! This is almost unbelievable.

[u/PlzLearn]

For more context, the ship was caught where it lifted off yesterday. It did 14 orbits around the earth (22 hours in space) and blazed through the atmosphere at 26k km/hr right before this.

Edit: also worth noting, the ship is 52 meters (171 feet) tall

[u/riceman090]

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[u/Slim_Boy_Fat]

Absolutely ridiculous! What an incredible achievement 👏

[u/Danbar0]

Great work by Elon and his engineering team!

[u/Valhallapeenyo]

Seriously incredible. Don’t care what you think about the dude in charge.

[u/BA_lampman]

Sitting here with a migraine, and this is the first thing that made me smile today. Almost brought tears to my eyes. In this age of stress, regression, damage, and fear, it's so important to remember how truly amazing humanity can be when we combine our efforts.

[u/Minute-Solution5217]

I watched the first successful flip live. And now they made it this far. Great work

[u/Kotukunui]

That’s very impressive. Nice catch! I did notice that just as the chopsticks started to close, one of the center engines stopped working (dropped from three to two). Is that SOP? Or is a fallback to two an acceptable loss of function?

[u/heyimalex26 → u/Kotukunui]

It’s a part of the shutdown sequence as described on the mission website

https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-15

[u/Shrike99 → u/Kotukunui]

SOP. Three engines produce too much thrust for the ship to hover, so they downselect to two once it nulls out it's vertical velocity.

[u/Gigalisk]

This is an absolute feat of engineering.
Theres not enough words to sum that shit up.

[u/BP_1981]

That's insane, Wernher Von Braun would be tripping balls if he could have seen this.

[u/ilfulo]

Hell Yeah!!! I've been waiting since 2019 and the first, shy starhopper steps... I'm almost crying of joy!!!

[u/GaryQueenofScots]

Incredible feat of engineering!

[u/reversetrio]

Can someone explain the purpose or benefit of this landing method? Is it more fuel efficient, more stable, more reliable (in theory), potentially safer? It's cool, but what is the utility?

Edit: Thanks for the multitude of replies. The consensus seems to be that the lack of landing gear saves weight and thereby load on the engine, meaning a greater proportion of the fuel is used on transporting cargo. Also having the rocket return to the launch facility saves on recovery costs and shortens the time to repair, refueling, and relaunching. Did I miss anything?

[u/tanrgith → u/reversetrio]

It mean the starship doesn't need landing legs. Which makes the Starship weigh less, allowing for a bigger payload or less stress on engines, and also means the starship design is less complicated, which lowers cost and means less things can go wrong

[u/MrParticular79 → u/reversetrio]

Landing legs are heavy I assume that’s the main reason. Also if you land on the tower then you refill and just take back off. Eventually.

[u/SpiderSlitScrotums → u/reversetrio]

It saves weight, thus allowing more mass to orbit.

[u/wheniaminspaced → u/reversetrio]

Theoretically at this point it is more stable, reliable, safer, and significantly cheaper.

The theoretical aspect is stable reliable and safer haven't been tested enough to say for sure.  We do know its significantly cheaper than the shuttle ever was though.

The landing method is in part dictated by the design goal, space shuttle problem, every heat shield tile was unique this means expensive and long times between landing and the next flight.  Starship not having to have a large wingspan and being largely a cyclinder has allowed for a much more universal tile application, there are still some unique geometry tiles, but much less of a puzzle than the shuttle.  End goal faster reply time, and should be a safety increase.

The shuttle had very few options once it hit atmosphere because once it left space it was an unpowered brick it could change where it was going but this was very limited.  Starship having power during landing opens up more options.  

Finally size, starship is huge, 3x the interior volume 4x the mass delivered to LEO.

What really sets it apart is pairing booster and top stage landings together, this didn't happen on this flight but they have caught boosters before, we know it can be done.  Once you catch both on the same flight and then are able to repeat thats the game changer.  No rockets ever done that, starship has proven the theory and just needs to put the last bits together now all at the same time.

[u/bdougherty → u/reversetrio]

The ultimate goal is to be able to land, refuel, and launch again. If you're trying to do that, why not land at the same place you launch from? Plus you save on the weight and complexity of landing legs or whatever other landing solution they might use.

[u/CyriousLordofDerp → u/reversetrio]

The whole idea with catching the ship and booster is to get the added deadweight of the landing gear off the flight hardware. Thats extra mass that doesnt need to be hauled into the air/space and protected from re-entry.

Catching the flight hardware also means its already on the hardware meant to manipulate and move it around on and off the pad. They could catch the booster, plunk it down into the launch mount, shift the arms off to the side, catch the ship when it comes back, plunk that directly on top of the booster, refuel both, and launch again.

Before the catch arms they had to use monster cranes to haul the booster and the ship off the transporters and onto the pad.

[u/redstercoolpanda]

Cadence is really going to start ramping up now, especially if they catch the booster next flight.

[u/chasethesoundguy]

Pfft. Everyone knows that rocket was staged.

[u/RaguSaucy96]

Haters are gonna be on Fraud watch now, lmao

Lfg!!!

[u/CanadianGuy39 → u/RaguSaucy96]

Oh I still despise Elon, but this was amazing. Great work by that team.

[u/Nixon4Prez → u/CanadianGuy39]

There's Elon haters and there's SpaceX haters. One is justified, the other is mostly people who have no idea what they're talking about.

[u/RaguSaucy96 → u/CanadianGuy39]

Ditto - SpaceX engineers are GOATed though, and this is a major achievement for humanity

[u/Human-Assumption-524 → u/RaguSaucy96]

Nah, they'll just fixate on the aborted booster landing.