Timeline for Why not land SpaceX's Starship like a plane?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
34 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 3, 2022 at 6:23 | comment | added | SF. | I wonder how you imagine first landing on Mars, before any infrastructure like landing strips is built. | |
| Aug 2, 2021 at 22:04 | answer | added | Flash Gordon | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 5, 2021 at 21:38 | comment | added | peterh | Wings add $\approx$ 10% weight, they are unusable on the Moon and nearly unusable on the Mars. More effective to aerobraking without wings and then propulsive vertical landing. Planes are landing horizontally because weak engines. | |
| Mar 5, 2021 at 18:44 | answer | added | John Bode | timeline score: 0 | |
| Mar 5, 2021 at 4:57 | comment | added | uhoh | @BlainePeterson that's an interesting perspective, and if you were interested in phrasing it as a new question post it could be explored further. Stack Exchange is fairly rigid about the purposes of question and answer posts and comments, so the title were "Technical challenges to Starship-like rockets using ballast-shifting to ensure that the landing tail is relatively heavy compared to the tip at landing?" We use the "Technical challenges to X?" format instead of "Why don't they X?" or "Could X work?" format because it's more likely to have fact-based rather than opinion-based answers. | |
| S Mar 4, 2021 at 14:10 | comment | added | Blaine Peterson | the landing tail is relatively heavy compared to the landing tip are not being discussed. I would expect the less dense atmosphere to benefit this approach. It may be that these are already considered but I would appreciate someone enlightening curious engineers like me. | |
| S Mar 4, 2021 at 14:10 | comment | added | Blaine Peterson | I am an engineer but certainly not one with expertise related to spaceships including landing. Still I have to say that I am incredibly surprised to learn of these repeated failures. I would have expected the vertical landing of the spaceship to be far less challenging that it apparently is. And I find the discussion related to non-vertical landing as completely off-base for the reasons some have suggested above (including the likelihood of locating suitably flat terrain on non-earth destinations). I still don't fully understand why measures including shifting ballast within the ship to ensure | |
| Feb 16, 2021 at 15:02 | comment | added | loweryjk | I never said it was perfect, I said I think there is a lot less risk involved. There were other unrelated design issues that led to the Columbia disaster. I don't think anyone can honestly say that gliding to an airstrip and relying on a set of landing legs to work is riskier or remotely on par with relying on multiple rocket engines to light at precisely the right time while at the same time also relying on a cadre of navigation sensors and attitude control hardware to keep the whole thing upright. Please! | |
| Feb 14, 2021 at 16:27 | comment | added | Russell Borogove | @nohillside They didn't attempt to land. | |
| Feb 14, 2021 at 10:32 | comment | added | nohillside | @RussellBorogove The Columbia crew might disagree with perfect landing safety record claim. | |
| Feb 14, 2021 at 4:38 | comment | added | Russell Borogove | @TooTea How does the Space Shuttle -- with its perfect landing safety record -- show that horizontal landing is not safer than vertical? | |
| Feb 13, 2021 at 22:31 | answer | added | Level River St | timeline score: 4 | |
| S Feb 12, 2021 at 21:33 | history | edited | Camille Goudeseune | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| S Feb 12, 2021 at 21:33 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 12, 2021 at 18:46 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Feb 12, 2021 at 21:33 | |||||
| Feb 12, 2021 at 18:01 | vote | accept | loweryjk | ||
| Feb 12, 2021 at 17:03 | comment | added | jamesqf | Because Musk was heavily influenced by the covers of '50s and '60s SF books? | |
| Feb 12, 2021 at 13:11 | answer | added | Graham | timeline score: 46 | |
| Feb 12, 2021 at 10:03 | comment | added | Michael | As far as I know Starship (unlike Falcon 9) can throttle the engines far enough to hover. So for additional safety in manned landings one could light several engines for landing and/or start lighting them early enough to bring another engine up if the first one fails to light. | |
| Feb 12, 2021 at 9:36 | answer | added | GremlinWranger | timeline score: 17 | |
| Feb 12, 2021 at 7:52 | comment | added | TooTea | Your question is based on a false premise that landing horizontally would somehow be significantly safer. The example of the Space Shuttle shows that this is very much not the case. Without sufficient engine power and fuel to perform a go-around and powerful control surfaces to correct for off-nominal situations (wind shear, asymmetric thrust due to engine failures, energy management issues), you only ever get one shot at the landing and if anything goes slightly wrong, crater again. | |
| Feb 12, 2021 at 6:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackSpaceExp/status/1360106370775855105 | ||
| Feb 12, 2021 at 3:47 | comment | added | Organic Marble | I think you just answered your own question. | |
| Feb 12, 2021 at 3:44 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Feb 12, 2021 at 3:38 | comment | added | loweryjk | Yeah basically a space shuttle, on top of a booster. | |
| Feb 12, 2021 at 0:19 | comment | added | Star Man | So basically, a Space Shuttle? | |
| Feb 12, 2021 at 0:00 | answer | added | Robert DiGiovanni | timeline score: 9 | |
| Feb 11, 2021 at 20:11 | history | edited | geoffc |
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| Feb 11, 2021 at 20:10 | answer | added | geoffc | timeline score: 13 | |
| Feb 11, 2021 at 19:56 | comment | added | Steve Linton | The mass of wings and an undercarriage is simply unmanagable, I suspect. I would guess that manned landings will carry a significantly larger fuel reserve than unmanned ones. | |
| Feb 11, 2021 at 19:54 | answer | added | Jörg W Mittag | timeline score: 51 | |
| Feb 11, 2021 at 19:44 | comment | added | Organic Marble | Are you suggesting adding wings to it? | |
| Feb 11, 2021 at 19:41 | review | First posts | |||
| Feb 11, 2021 at 21:39 | |||||
| Feb 11, 2021 at 19:41 | history | asked | loweryjk | CC BY-SA 4.0 |