SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling chopsticks landing

Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by wil421 on Tuesday November 19, 2024 @07:59PM (#42189784)

Why would they plan to catch it and then divert mid flight if they didn’t want to reuse it?

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by afro88 on Tuesday November 19, 2024 @08:06PM (#42189826)

It's possible to plan for multiple eventualities. They may have pushed it to its limits (or beyond) and decided the best destination based on how it handled it

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by ammojamo on Tuesday November 19, 2024 @08:09PM (#42189841)

I believe they diverted to save the tower from being potentially damaged/destroyed by a failed landing.

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by zamadatix on Tuesday November 19, 2024 @08:19PM (#42189897)

Which would be in direct conflict with the reason given originally above.

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by eru on Tuesday November 19, 2024 @08:22PM (#42189917)

They might be happy to push hard enough to risk the booster, but be much less willing to risk the tower? Seems perfectly consistent to me.

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by zamadatix on Tuesday November 19, 2024 @08:36PM (#42190005)

I like SpaceX as much as the next nerd but that's not "intentionally crashing the booster" it's "doing the only other type of landing you can when you abort the first plan of landing it successfully". I'm sure they got useful data out of it (it's better than "booster blows up in mid air") but this is squarely in "2nd attempt to land with chopsticks wasn't as ready as they hoped" bucket, not "132nd attempt to land the booster was intentionally destroying it to see how much farther they could be pushing it" as was originally implied with the wording and prior example.

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by eru on Tuesday November 19, 2024 @09:20PM (#42190263)

Oh, sure, I didn't want to make any comment on what they were actually doing or trying to accomplish. Only that the hypothetical we were talking about would have been consistent.

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by samatman on Tuesday November 19, 2024 @10:59PM (#42190717)

There's a lot of middle ground here. I suspect what's most accurate is "let's push the booster out of envelope a bit, if we get really nice numbers we'll go for the chopsticks landing, otherwise it's into the drink".

In other words, they were optimistic enough to think that another upright landing was within the realm of possibility, while also deliberately doing things which made that outcome less likely, to get the data they need.

If that's true, I wouldn't characterize it as a second attempt at a chopstick land, that would just be a stretch goal. Who knows if it is, but it's consistent with how SpaceX operates.

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by zamadatix on Wednesday November 20, 2024 @03:37PM (#42197859)

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...

> During this phase, automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt.

Surely you aren't saying there is middle ground in the way the tower is being tested that caused the abort of the booster landing?

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by samatman on Wednesday November 20, 2024 @05:16PM (#42198695)

No, but I'm neither omniscient nor able to see into the future. It's not clear to me that the sentence you're referring to had been posted 18 hours ago, and in any case, I hadn't seen it.

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Re:SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling c... by qingcharles on Tuesday November 19, 2024 @08:41PM (#42190031)

One of the commentators said (roughly) "they can make another rocket real quick, but if they blow their one pad up then they are hosed for a long time."

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