For some context for those who aren't SpaceX fanboys (card carrying member here)...<p>Starship is a new two stage rocket SpaceX is building. It's going to have similar launch capabilities to the Saturn V Moon rocket, but be 100% reusable. The upper stage is planned to be able to take people to Mars and back.<p>The test today is a very early prototype. It's just the upper stage, just a mock up of it (literally built by a company that makes steel water towers, I've heard) and it had just one of their new "Raptor" Engines. The test was basically "Can we hover 150m in the air and safely land?". It passed almost perfectly. Why do this? Because the Raptor is a really complex and new design and SpaceX need to test the hell out of it.<p>Next after this will be two higher quality prototypes of the upper stage, probably with more engines, and probably to go high enough to test reentry. And then eventually a test of Stage 1, which will be a massive reusable booster (like Falcon 9 but many times larger).<p>The whole thing is designed for rapid reusability. No refurbishment between launches and no new hardware needed (100% reusable) means very low variable cost per launch.
An RCS tank fell off during landing and went flying :-)
(if not visible, rewind a bit. It's only clear when the video is shown in the highest resolution, which might not be the case during the initial buffering.)<p><a href="https://youtu.be/m0MTtqzzf-U?t=8518" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/m0MTtqzzf-U?t=8518</a>
That was really amazing. I've been following it closely on YouTube but to see it actually fly - mind boggling! Not quite clean room facilities. The nose blew over in a storm. Locals streaming video from cameras mounted on telegraph poles. When it landed various parts came shooting off spraying gas as they tumbled away.<p>Full-flow engine - first to ever fly. And boy did it fly!<p>I love it. Back yard hacking hardware.<p>Summary - SpaceX are the first people to land rockets for reuse. Then they go and do the same thing with a different engine design, different fuel, in a water tower controlled with Falcon 9 reaction control system.<p>Quick question for the experts:<p>1 - how do they measure altitude? GPS is notoriously poor at this.<p>2 - any idea of how the control software was written for a flying water tower? Could they use the Falcon 9 software?
This is the best prototyping I've ever seen. Small, 1 of 31 engines in the final config, water-tower contract, built in the open fields in south Texas, the whole thing.<p>The end game of this line of rockets is hundreds of Mars trips launching daily, carrying people and supplies to the Mars colony.
This was just a single raptor engine. I was quite amazed at how stable it’s thrust control was. Truly remarkable.<p>SpaceX definitely keeps on making me think I’m doing jack shit with my life.<p>Here are people prototyping and pushing frontiers in rocket technology, and all I do day in and out is pump out CRUD UIs.
What is special/hard to make for Starhopper compared to Falcon 9?<p>Hm..I think I found it on the net: The Raptor engines are the same size but are about twice as powerful as the existing Merlin engines.