#mechazilla

[without-ado]

SpaceX's Super Heavy Booster Catch (x)

[spaceexp]

SpaceX's Starship rocket system

[jameswebb-discoveries]

SpaceX Test Flight 5: Mechazilla Catches Super Heavy Booster in Epic Landing!

Watch the mind-blowing moment during SpaceX Test Flight 5 when Mechazilla successfully catches the Super Heavy Booster! From launch to landing, this marks a major breakthrough in reusable rocket technology. Don't miss this historic catch!

[thepastisalreadywritten]

[enlightenedsloth]

A small catch for humanity

This is an engineering marvel; nothing has been seen like this before. A rocket propeller, roughly the size of a 20-storey building, falling at a speed of 8000 km/h, was caught between metal chopsticks (Mechazilla), after descending from earth’s orbit. The propeller weighs 3500 tons, justifying its name- Super Heavy. They have made the whole world root for rocket launches, which I don’t think ever happened after the 1969 Saturn V launch.

A plethora of mechanisms had to work in tandem to make this possible. GPS and various other sensors such as RADAR- used for measuring the height of the rocket by bouncing off radio waves from the ground, LIDAR- to make a 3D model of the surrounding area by throwing laser pulses, had a part to play in the precision. The rocket propeller is specifically designed to launch Starship, a spacecraft which will potentially take astronauts to the Moon and Mars, and over the years, SpaceX has invested billions into this world-bending transporter.

Why billions? Why world-bending? Why should we care?

All of this to make our species multi-planetary. Every human, every living being that ever breathed for even a second has done it only at one place-earth (at least that’s what we know as of now), a small, rocky, gaseous ball floating in the vast expanse of 8.8 x 10^23 kilometers (diameter of the observable universe), our home. But if everything goes right, consciousness will have a new place to prosper in and become more self-aware. The starship is at the heart of this plan, as it will be a fully reusable rocket, capable of being refueled in the orbit, significantly bringing down the cost of rocket launches and increasing the travel duration per trip. The starship is the biggest rocket ever built which is capable of carrying large payloads and hence, it is the perfect tool to build a colony on Mars. Once the colony is built, they also plan to make it self-sustaining by terraforming the planet by releasing greenhouse gases to alter the atmosphere that will be suitable to us. The greenhouse gases will make the planet warm which increase atmospheric pressure and melt the large frozen water reservoirs on Mars.

Building a colony on Mars seems to be out of Hollywood sci-fi, but we as a species have always had it in us. Human migration to Australia 65000 odd years ago was a significant step. They didn’t have compasses, maps, or safety measures, but somehow, they crossed large seas with primitive hand-made boats and settled there. Even the 1969 Apollo 11 mission is a perfect analogy as the technology, Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) had a memory of 64 KB and could perform just 85000 instructions per second compared to modern smartphones, which have millions of times more processing power.

Ah! I want to live to see a self-sustaining colony being built on Mars.

[sudden-stops-kill]

starship...fight test 5

[tatmanblue]

When the Super Heavy booster lined up for the "chopsticks" catch, we knew we were witnessing a new era of space tech! by Peter Thoeny - Quality HDR Photography Via Flickr: My son and I decided to attend the launch of Starship 5, which was scheduled form Sunday October 13. This SpaceX mission was historical: The objective was to catch the Super Heavy booster on return with the Mechazilla arms, nicknamed "chopsticks". The booster slowed to a near hover and did a horizontal slide maneuver to line itself up with, and rest on two massive "chopstick" arms on the launch tower. It was an amazing feat many considered impossible! I processed a balanced and a photographic HDR photo from 3 RAW exposures, blended them into a composite image, and carefully adjusted the color balance and curves. I welcome and appreciate constructive comments. Thank you for visiting - ♡ with gratitude! Fave if you like it, add comments below, like the Facebook page, order beautiful HDR prints at qualityHDR.com. -- ƒ/6.3, 375 mm, 1/640 sec, ISO 1600, Sony A6400, Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3, HDR, 3 RAW exposures, _DSC8608_10_21_hdr1bal1pho1f.jpg -- CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, © 2024 Peter Thoeny, Quality HDR Photography

[sudden-stops-kill]

flight test 5