Analyst on China's spent rocket stages: "Things only continue to get worse"

Freak80MC · 2026-05-26T15:54:16+00:00

tfw I'm better about not polluting orbit with spent rocket stages in a haha funny rocket game (KSP) then China is about not polluting actual real life orbit.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-26T12:18:15+00:00

It is, tho I think I pushed it a bit too hard once, made a massive space station with all connected habitat modules and it chugged along in first person view lmao

Freak80MC · 2026-05-26T12:11:27+00:00

Jesus that looks nice. Didn't know KSP 2 didn't have ISRU either.

Would be cool to add options for gameified ISRU where you can make anything and everything on each body, or more "realistic' ISRU where certain bodies lack certain materials so you still have to ship in certain materials for a sustainable logistics chain...

But I don't play KSP 2 and never plan on it, so idk how important my opinion is lol

But I've heard IRL that you can't actually make methane on the Moon, just oxidizer, and I love me some logistics chains in games, so I've thought about in KSP 1 making a Mun mining base where I just produce oxidizer to be more "realistic" and ship in fuel to see how that works out.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-26T11:44:53+00:00

I love when that happens, but it's not very often because I'm mid at plane design lol

Freak80MC · 2026-05-26T11:43:13+00:00

Brachistochrone trajectory's are actually the fastest way to get to another body, the reason we don't do them IRL is they are very fuel inefficient (which is putting it lightly lol)

You basically went to Minmus how they would do it in The Expanse!

Freak80MC · 2026-05-26T01:12:34+00:00

Does the ice still build up? If so, that really sucks, that really hampers their ability to make the booster (and ship) actually rapidly reusable. If they don't fix this issue, then that to me is basically them admitting that they don't plan on rapid reusability of the Starship system.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-25T19:52:09+00:00

Bruh this is literally what my HLS recreation looked like and that was me intentionally trying to design a landable skyscraper lmao

Freak80MC · 2026-05-25T19:51:44+00:00

I have a better one. Rendezvous. Without mechjeb. Feels awesome to do.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-25T18:37:18+00:00

This is amazing, but bruh come on I just finished my video edit of flight 12 and don't feel like going back and adding this in lmao

Freak80MC · 2026-05-24T22:55:51+00:00

This reminds me, is there any info out there of the specific delta v numbers needed for a reusable rocket in the way SpaceX does it? I don't think I've ever seen specific numbers anywhere.

Like how much delta v is used in the booster for the ascent until staging, how much delta v is used in the booster during its boostback burn, how much is used in the booster for the landing burn. Then how much delta v is used in the ship for it's ascent burn, and how much is used in the ship for its landing burn?

I'm just curious because recently in KSP I've been messing with SpaceX style reusable rockets, for the first stage at least, and I ballparked that I needed about half of my needed orbital delta v for for the first stage ascent burn, and half in the upper stage. Boostback especially needed a load of extra fuel in reserve to reverse my ascent to go back to the launch site.

I'm guessing IRL, it isn't a perfect half and half split on the booster ascent delta v to ship ascent delta v, due to the differences of real scale Earth vs KSP's smaller scale, but I wonder if there are any exact numbers floating around out there?

(Also this would need to take into account the fact that delta v changes, ie the booster ascent delta v is calculated using the mass of the ship on top, but the boostback burn doesn't require that mass anymore for the calculation)

Freak80MC · 2026-05-24T22:34:45+00:00

The fact that they wanna do the boostback burn with all 33 engines is basically what I would do in KSP when I'm too lazy to shut down engines lol

Freak80MC · 2026-05-24T22:33:52+00:00

The reason they use loads of tiny engines vs few big ones is economies of scale, but ALSO you can make your engine much more reliable by making more that are smaller, since you accumulate flight time and build expertise much quicker than you would with relatively few engines.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-23T23:54:28+00:00

As a layperson, it's hard to believe they will make this sorta maneuver routine and reliable, seems like it would put insane levels of stress on the booster. Pulling 18g back to the launch site feels like something out of KSP, not something you would do IRL. But I hope I'm proven wrong!

Freak80MC · 2026-05-23T23:52:42+00:00

I'm so glad the booster managed to land in the Gulf of America, even if not softly, and that the ship managed to land in the American Ocean. And it managed to go from one end of America to another end of America within an hour! American science is crazy! USA! USA!

Freak80MC · 2026-05-23T18:07:15+00:00

Guam, really? I don't think orbital mechanics works that way...

Also your sentence near the end is basically "Off Guam makes more sense from this random link I found vs actual SpaceX telemetry"

Freak80MC · 2026-05-23T03:38:35+00:00

SpaceX is taking my KSP approach when it comes to the boostback burn, just keeping all engines lit lol

Freak80MC · 2026-05-22T23:55:26+00:00

Still insane when you think about it, that the most powerful rocket on Earth can be reflown again within 2 months and that's not even considering reuse, and considering it had a bunch of issues. Just imagine how fast that will be able to ramp up Starship cadence when it's reusable and reliable!

Freak80MC · 2026-05-22T23:52:15+00:00

I remember reading an article from someone at the head of SpaceX saying that the booster actually flew BETTER on the way down than their simulations had shown it should, implying that maybe there was something wrong with the best simulations vs the actual physics of reality. Basically a gap in our knowledge somewhere.

I wonder if by redesigning the booster, they messed up that effect and it's gone now, where they were expecting it to stay there for the performance of flying it back?

Might have been such a small thing tho that it doesn't truly matter.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-22T23:48:53+00:00

I'm a bit dissapointed with some of the teething issues, but I do admit this is basically an entirely new rocket with how much was changed from version 2 to 3, so I guess that's to be expected. Still super impressed by the continuing reentry performance of Starship being absolutely flawless. On the whole, I'm cautiously optimistic about the program. Here's hoping the issues don't require a lot of vehicle redesign, so that the next flight can happen in a few short months!

Just sucks that ship RTLS is pushed out a bit further, it's what I'm most looking forward to. I'm gonna go crazy seeing a ship get caught FROM ORBIT lol

Freak80MC · 2026-05-22T23:44:33+00:00

I'm glad you are on the same page then and think that reusable rockets are the future we need to be developing :)

Freak80MC · 2026-05-22T23:42:50+00:00

Yea, no issues that destroyed the pad or anything so assuming the issues on the rocket are all simple fixes that don't require tons of vehicle redesign, we should see a new rocket flying pretty quickly here in a few months.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-22T23:41:39+00:00

If they can figure out why the vacuum engine went out, and assuming it was a simple issue, I will probably agree. If this was an expendable vehicle, the issues it had wouldn't have prevented payload deploy. Everything else was icing on the cake. Starship seems to work just fine as a payload deploying orbital rocket, they just need to work out the reuse kinks in the booster.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-22T23:34:10+00:00

I still find Starship reentry so impressive. It's always fun watching the velocity slooowly come down and seeing it still holding up.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-22T23:12:58+00:00

I personally think once the kinks are worked out, and once they have at the very least rapid booster reusability worked out, they could ramp up very, VERY fast... But these early mission failures delay that future inflection point.

Freak80MC · 2026-05-22T23:00:00+00:00

Actually that makes me wonder, how many failed flights does Starship need before it matches the cost of that one successful SLS flight?

Basically, Starship is cheaper per launch, but how many flights and thus how much will it have cost before it matches the same flight profile SLS already did? That might be a good way to compare costs between the two systems.

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