HardwareSpaceX’s Starship ‘chopstick landing’ technique just made every Kerbal Space Program enthusiast go green with envyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
HardwareSpaceX’s Starship ‘chopstick landing’ technique just made every Kerbal Space Program enthusiast go green with envyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Starship launch and Super Heavy landing, 13 October 2024 - YouTubeWatch On
Starship launch and Super Heavy landing, 13 October 2024 - YouTube
Starship launch and Super Heavy landing, 13 October 2024 - YouTube
Kerbal Space Programis one of those games where, if you caught the bug, it never really left you. I still sometimes fall asleep at night envisioning new and creative ways to build rockets that fail miserably, despite not having touched the game for well over a year now.
Watching the latestSpaceX Starship booster return footagethough, I felt that familiar itch return again (viaBBC News). Elon Musk’s pet space project has achieved many remarkable feats in the past few years, but manoeuvring aSuper Heavyrocket booster down to a launch pad under its own power, turning upright on its end, and then catching it with a pair of chopsticks in mid-air in a perfect display of tech ballet really strikes as a breakthrough moment for spaceflight.
What makes this even more impressive? It was the first proper attempt at this rocket booster capture method and one that SpaceX’s engineers thought was something of a long shot. After all, the company has taken the tech industry approach of “move fast, break stuff” to something of an extreme inprevious attempts to both launch and land its rocket boosters, and this new ‘mid-air catch’ method looked like its most ambitious version to date.
Just two minutes before landing, final checks were still being made to determine whether the attempt was possible, or whether it was better to bail out and dump the booster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Still, the call was made, and the audible cheers from the SpaceX team and observers are enough to send a genuine shiver down the spine as the booster first slows its descent, then manoeuvres itself gently into position, before being clamped into place.
As for the ship section (which eventually, Musk and his engineers hopewill take a crew to the Moon, Mars, and potentially beyond), that too made something of a successful “landing” in the Indian Ocean roughly 40 minutes later.
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Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines.Best gaming laptop: Great devices for mobile gaming.
So, hats off to the SpaceX team for managing the extremely difficult on the first attempt. Just as well really, as NASA is hoping the the Starship mega-rocket will launch the moon lander for itsArtemis 3 mission, scheduled for 2026.
While I imagine NASA will be more concerned with delivering its equipment to the Moon safely rather than successfully recovering the booster for re-use, this latest demonstration appears to show that SpaceX’s technology is developing at pace.
A first-test demonstration of the new landing method is one thing, but plentymore testswill have to occur before the Starship system is trusted to carry extremely expensive equipment or actual human beings. Still, if things continue at this rate, it looks like future astronauts might be making use of a rocket system with a party trick—and one that Kerbal Space Program enthusiasts will continue to look at with envy and awe.
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