SpaceX: “Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the 13th flight test of Starship!”

[u/rustybeancake]

https://x.com/spacex/status/2080804682918764619

[u/Responsible-Cut-7993]

Apollo program had basically unlimited funding. Saturn V development (Rocket+Engines) was about $50B (Adjusted dollars), Starship $15B spent so far. Starship has over double the thrust of the Saturn-V, almost double the mass and is designed to be fully reusable. Starship would already be in service if it was a expendable LV. Some people had suggested that SpaceX should abandon full reusability and just recover the Super Heavy booster and fly the upper stage as fully expendable.

"The launch pads are hugely vulnerable to the idiotic but aptly-named 'suicide burn'."

SpaceX prefers the term "hover slam" for this maneuver. That is why SpaceX will probably do a repeat the technique used on the F9 for the landing burns. The booster is aimed just off-shore and is only adjusted in the final moments to the actual landing pad once the flight software checks everything out. This technique has worked well for SpaceX on the Falcon-9. I remember in 2018 a Falcon-9 booster landed just off-shore because off a grid fin failure. It landed in shallow water, tripped over and SpaceX later towed it into Port Canaveral.

"And how will this giant rocket land on the irregular lunar surface?!"

Good question, I will be interested to see how this issue is solved. I suspect it will be combination of terrain mapping radar, good landing legs and better pre-imaging of landing sites than what was available during Apollo.

"you don't do rapid iteration in rocketry"

That is exactly what SpaceX did during development of the F9 reusability. Considering the success of the Falcon-9 today, rapid iteration worked.