So I’ve heard and seen the newest launch, and I thought for a private firm it seemed cool they were able to do it on their own, but I’m scratching my head that people are gushing about this as some hail mary.
I get the engineering required is staggering when it comes to these rocket tests, but NASA and other big space agencies have already done rocket tests and exploring bits of the moon which still astounds me to this day.
Is it because it’s not a multi billion government institution? When I tell colleagues about NASA doing stuff like this yeaaaars ago they’re like “Yea yea but this is different it’s crazy bro”
Can anyone help me understand? Any SpaceX or Tesla fans here?
Between the orbiter (reused), the boosters (reused), and the external fuel tank (not reused), which parts are not “just a small part” (in terms of technology/complexity/cost, not physical size)?
I take the part about “a small part” back as that’s a misleading term for what I meant: The Super Heavy booster is much bigger in both technology/complexity and physical size and has many more parts than the old space shuttle rockets as it needs to carry the weight of two space shuttle orbiters. Plus, spaceplane is weird.
Remember, unless we’re talking about Enterprise, “space shuttle rockets” includes the orbiter itself. The orbiter’s main engines were where all that fuel from the external tank was going, after all! From that perspective, I would argue that the main “space shuttle rocket” was were definitely much more complex than the Super Heavy booster, because the crew stuff, cargo stuff, spaceplane stuff, etc. was integrated into it.
I feel like your criticism of the shuttle system being less reusable than advertised might have been more applicable if we were talking about the Soviet Buran (which indeed used expendable Energia rockets to reach orbit), not NASA’s shuttles.
I was under the impression that a “rocket” does not include the payload. Now that I search it up, I am not sure what to call that part.
Sure, I think you’re totally correct… if the part with the engine is separable from the part with the payload. But with the Space Shuttle, that isn’t the case unless you’re limiting yourself to talking about the SRBs. The orbiter is a spaceplane and that makes it weird, but its main engines are rocket engines (as opposed to a hybrid ramjet or something) and it launches vertically, so I think it’s still fair to also call it a rocket.
Or as another example, consider the problem scaled aaaaaaaall the way down to something like this:
Is the whole thing a “rocket,” or does that only describe the bottom half and it’s called something else from the payload bay up?
In my impression, the payload includes the entire spacecraft, none of which is part of the rocket.