China recently pulled off a successful booster catch on a boat at sea. It landed in a sort of net deal. They know you can't run a rocket business if you don't reuse the rockets.
You wait til they get THAT all sorted out. Comin soon...
Time for surf now. 😎🤙
Ahh, I gotcha. I see now. And yes, that is an INTEGRAL part of rockets and space exploration. That is why I would always chime in and give Elon a flock of shit around 5 years ago. Because every few months, I would read "SpaceX Rocket Test tomorrow" and every time, the following day, I would see a headline like: "Another SpaceX Rocket explodes spectacularly"... kind of deal.
So at that point, I was convinced he was at least 10+ years before he does anything with people etc, since all his shit was blowing up. But in hindsight, I think that was all factored in to his plan, and to get a successful rocket built, I guess you have to blow up like 20 of them, t which point, you can start thinking about retrieving and re-using. Not too many years ago, they couldn't even get one up in the air before it went boom boom. They have come a long way for sure.
RUD. Rapid Unplanned Disassembly. Or Unscheduled.
RUDs are part of new rockets. 😁💥
I saw em explode a rocket that was goin sideways in the air back toward Merritt Island, inland, one time. We'd always see rockets goin up in the air to the right, east out over the ocean. This one just wigged out and started flyin sideways back over town. 💥💥💥 Blew that puppy WAY past smithereens. Self destructo. Holy FUCK that was loud. Only saw that once. It wasn't like it was pointed west. Still pointed mostly UP. Wild as hell seein a rocket do that shit. Was pretty obvious it wasn't intentional. 😲
Starship is in the Gulf. Almost home now.
They got home just in time to avoid Isaias. 😏
Haha. Nice. Car does a kick flip. 👽🤙
They got the same data display setup like for SpaceX rocket launches. Love it. 😁
Traffic jam, no problem, beam me up Scotty!
There's been fun expert commentary on the flyin car. Scott Manley went into it pretty deep. Ends up he's also a very experienced pilot too, btw. It's pretty cool it uses actual air for the propellant. Super high pressure. There's definitely limitations in this young version. As soon as you start usin the thrusters, the tank pressure drops. That lowers the thrust rapidly. Them maneuvers were probably close to the max capacity of what's possible. You can't just fly around town and shit. Tank refills are cheap air, but it probably takes hours to fully reload the tank to eleventy bazillion psi. Oh... the "smoke" is actually the frigid air exhaust condensing the surrounding air. The propellant air temperature drops way down below zero as a result of how the rocket works. So, it's not actually smoke. More like a CO2 extinguisher. Reminds me of Wall-E flyin around in space. 👽🧯
Scott Manley did have one critique, sorta. Said they missed the opportunity to go Knight Rider. The lights sweepin across the front, and the car calls ya Michael.
That woulda been fun. 😎