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One item of precision that I'm not seeing much mention of is the alignment of the lugs on the Starship booster when the chopsticks grab it.
They are 180° apart and there's just two of them.
That means they have to be sticking out perpendicular to the chopstick arms when they move in to grab the booster.
Just a couple of degrees of roll on the part of the booster and it falls instead of getting grabbed.
I'll lay odds the grid fins will support the booster - not optimal, but it might be sufficient to avoid a crash.
ReplyDeleteYep. Even more interesting is that the 'sled' that the pins land on didn't have to move too much out or in to center the catch pins in the middle of the sled.
ReplyDeleteAnd Tower 2's arms are, so far, only about half the length of the chopsticks on Tower 1.
Amazing precision on SpaceX's part. Crazy engineering. Yet both ULA and BO are still floundering and talking about some sort of reusability in years at the least. And Ariane has given up on reusability.
I’ve read the accuracy they wanted and achieved was 0.5 degree.
ReplyDeleteWatching that thing coming down and going Exactly where they wanted it to go left me feeling the same amazement I felt watching the Liftoff on TV in third grade. Teachers hauled their TV from home into the school back then. At least mine did. It was frikken Awesome!
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