It was surprising to see that it only took them about an hour to unstack (I didn't catch the stacking but I think I heard it was around the same amount of time ?).
I'm still very perplex about the "catching" mechanism they are designing, Musk mentioned in the Everyday Astronaut interview [1] that it was a very hard problem and I'm very curious to see if/how they can solve it.
I've seen that rendering and it looks absolutely nuts. "catch the falling rocket with tongs". It would be amazing if it works, but for now it looks like something that sci-fi would avoid as not seeming plausible.
Looking at that, surprised they didn't go for a taller tower and some kind of cable arrest system like aircraft carriers have. I'm sure they thought of it.
I am interested as well - terrestrial civil engineering, and associated carbon steel, concrete, and rebar materials, are dirt cheap in comparison to interplanetary aerospace engineering and their alloy or composite materials.
I'd have started my design like a Delta robot or inverted Stewart platform, with a trio of sturdy towers, a catchment ring in the middle, and cables running to large electric motors with massive heatsinks (saltwater?) that could position the ring anywhere in X/Y/Z between the towers. By choosing a site with a low central valley between three natural peaks, you could get a huge amount of volume and not need as high a tower, I hear there's a site over a Puerto Rican sinkhole that recently became available - though be gentle during disassembly of the previous structure, it belongs in a museum....
Engineering is expensive, materials are cheap; always make the process window as large as possible!
Nice video, thanks for sharing. I liked that bit on requirements:
Whatever requirement or constraint you have, it must come with a name, not a department. 'Cause you can't ask the departments, you have to ask a person, and that person who's putting forward, the requirement or constraint must agree that, they must take responsibility for that requirement.Otherwise you could have a requirement that basically an intern two years ago randomly came up with, off the cuff and they're not even have the company anymore. But it came from the, let's say, air loads department. They're like, actually there's no one at our current department that currently agrees with that.
Yeah, I think the chopsticks makes sense. For the actual contact I would have thought a friction based solution (wide soft/grippy chopsticks) being easier in practice. Too bad the metal they are using is not magnetic.
Comments
And unstacked !
It was surprising to see that it only took them about an hour to unstack (I didn't catch the stacking but I think I heard it was around the same amount of time ?).
I'm still very perplex about the "catching" mechanism they are designing, Musk mentioned in the Everyday Astronaut interview [1] that it was a very hard problem and I'm very curious to see if/how they can solve it.
[1] : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
I'm sure you've seen this rendering and Elon's response, but I thought I would post it for other's who have not: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1422603106035118085
I've seen that rendering and it looks absolutely nuts. "catch the falling rocket with tongs". It would be amazing if it works, but for now it looks like something that sci-fi would avoid as not seeming plausible.
I had not, thanks ! This seems crazy, I can't wait to see it in action.
Looking at that, surprised they didn't go for a taller tower and some kind of cable arrest system like aircraft carriers have. I'm sure they thought of it.
I am interested as well - terrestrial civil engineering, and associated carbon steel, concrete, and rebar materials, are dirt cheap in comparison to interplanetary aerospace engineering and their alloy or composite materials.
I'd have started my design like a Delta robot or inverted Stewart platform, with a trio of sturdy towers, a catchment ring in the middle, and cables running to large electric motors with massive heatsinks (saltwater?) that could position the ring anywhere in X/Y/Z between the towers. By choosing a site with a low central valley between three natural peaks, you could get a huge amount of volume and not need as high a tower, I hear there's a site over a Puerto Rican sinkhole that recently became available - though be gentle during disassembly of the previous structure, it belongs in a museum....
Engineering is expensive, materials are cheap; always make the process window as large as possible!
Nice video, thanks for sharing. I liked that bit on requirements:
As a "consultant" I fight phantom requirements every day! I can't agree more with this method!
Yeah, I think the chopsticks makes sense. For the actual contact I would have thought a friction based solution (wide soft/grippy chopsticks) being easier in practice. Too bad the metal they are using is not magnetic.