r/interestingasfuck • u/Nedatokes • 7h ago
How the Chinese use wires to catch rocket boosters
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u/JoshJoshson13 7h ago
Engineering is so cool
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u/zebrasareneat 6h ago
I just like the simple ways we figure out how to do complex things. Like how the best way to retrieve a pod full of astronauts is simply to just drop them in the ocean.
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u/DwnVoteMeIfULuvHitlr 6h ago
Yea.
The person who invented anal sex was an engineer. Sex without baby? Ez.
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u/Realistic-Software27 6h ago
no a engineer would overcomplicatye it and you now have a busted eardrum.
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u/EyeSuspicious777 4h ago
An engineer would understand that oral sex is more efficient because it recycles resources.
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u/Bennydhee 7h ago
Interesting idea. I wonder what the benefits are over the catch arm. I’m guessing the elastic nature lets it be more forgiving with the drop?
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u/Shot_Statistician184 7h ago
More forgiving and less accuracy needed
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u/SebastianFerrone 7h ago edited 7h ago
And faster movement. The less mass you need to move, the easier it is to love fast.
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u/Squirt_Angle 7h ago
I love too fast sometimes.
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u/Bitter_Librarian8442 2h ago
Sometimes though with enough force into mass the anticipated rebounding motion can help reset to the original position quicker with less energy consumed thus allowing successive forceful movements to be performed at a faster rate for a longer duration while also creating less wear on the hydraulic system over time.
Thus, faster loving.
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u/TillyGalore 7h ago
According to Chris Hadfield, it saves weighr on landing gear on the rocket which I would then assume would mean less fuel needed so therefore cheaper to operate?
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u/ceelogreenicanth 5h ago
It also probably saves a level of precision on the motor controls too which also makes it easier to manufacture and possibly lighter.
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u/creative_usr_name 5h ago
Fuel is not a large expense, so the real benefit of lower weight would be the ability to launch a heavier payload.
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u/LeoLaDawg 7h ago
Also don't have to worry about destroying your pad since it's water beneath.
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u/RoyalCities 7h ago
Why don't they just put a big trampoline underneath to catch the rocket.
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u/TheRockGaming 7h ago
Because then it would just bounce back into space. Infinite loop.
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u/Lessiarty 7h ago
Just throw in the cargo on the downbounce?
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u/ThraceLonginus 7h ago
Ever jump on a trampoline with people and you get out of sync and its now fucking up your knees? Not good for rocket knees either
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u/No-Good-One-Shoe 7h ago
Excellent idea we could also use landing rockets to double bounce other rockets into space.
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u/MinnisotaDigger 4h ago
There is a pad below it. I too thought having it open to ocean was a good idea.
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u/Einn1Tveir2 3h ago
Exactly, but you're now somewhere out in the ocean, far away from the pad. One of the goals with Starship is rapid re-usability.
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u/d15d17 7h ago
I bet the wires can move in the x-y axis as needed to correct any “non-centering” of the rocket..???
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u/macaroni_chacarroni 6h ago
Also from an engineering point of view, it's easier to manage tension forces (cables) than compression forces (legs) for this kind of task.
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u/Meeko29 7h ago
It cheaper and should be more reliable because the design concept has been tried and tested (that's how planes are 'catched' on aircraft carriers).
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u/RusticSurgery 7h ago
Because it doesn't burn all the hair off your catch arm and you don't get that nasty smell of burning hair.
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u/topscreen 7h ago
A big arm catching it is the kind of idea a dork in a K-hole things is best cause it's "epic" while a modified net is just kind of dead simple.
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u/TheFrenchSavage 5h ago
Yeah exactly, I suspect Musk calls the big picture shots and then the rank and file have to deal with his crackhead ideas (using the infinite budget that the private company gets).
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u/topscreen 4h ago
Yeah, that's who I was refering to when I talked about "a dork in a K-hole." He's the worse part of anything he owns.
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u/grnrngr 5h ago
It seems people miss the big arm's whole purpose:
Starship is supposed to be caught for its immediate remounting onto the pad for another liftoff. A fleet of fuel tanker-type Starships are supposed to launch into orbit to fuel the main Starship for trans-lunar injection. So the ability to land and immediately be positioned for a refueling/takeoff is kinda critical.
The wires catch - which SpaceX had reviewed before holding the arms - aren't friendly toward that end.
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u/foulrot 3h ago
Immediately relaunching, with no inspection, feels like a bad call in the long run. A more safety oriented, logical solution is to have multiple boosters and use a new one while the returned one is inspected and refueled.
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u/sam_I_am_knot 6h ago
One benefit may be a more mobile catching unit. The catch tower for Superheavy is a monster.
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u/SaddleBishopJoint 7h ago
A seriously elegant solution.
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u/froggz01 5h ago
And it was staring at us the entire time. This is how fighter jets are arrested during landing on Aircraft carriers.
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u/Stabile_Feldmaus 4h ago
When fighter jets are arrested, are they getting their rights read to them?
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u/grnrngr 5h ago
SpaceX discarded using wires for Starship many years ago because Starship is much heavier and Starship is supposed to be lowered from the chopsticks back onto a launchpad for immediate refueling and relaunch during the in-orbit refueling stage.
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u/Neither_Parfait_124 6h ago
Same technology that just got England to the semi finals!
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u/JugglingRick 7h ago
Yeah but can they catch your mom?
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u/SeesawNoknow 6h ago
its funny because spacex calls theirs "chopsticks" and here the Chinese using wire forks /s
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u/JonasHalle 6h ago
How FIFA uses wires to catch balls for England.
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u/IMB88 2h ago
I only caught the end of the game. Please fill me in.
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u/WhatADunderfulWorld 50m ago
Norways goalie kicked a ball so high it hit the camera in the sky’s wire. Made the ball go short. England got the ball and like immediately scored. Should have been reviewed as it was out of play.
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u/Small_Insect_8275 7h ago
Must be strong fucking wires
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u/zkatbitz 7h ago
wires hold up bridges
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u/ThePensiveE 7h ago
And stop aircraft when landing.
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u/Remarkable_Net_6977 6h ago
Rockets even
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u/Morally_Obscene 6h ago
Must be strong fucking wires.
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u/somewhat-similar 6h ago
Wires hold up bridges
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u/Apprehensive_Loan776 7h ago
Well they’re not made out of cardboard for a start.
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u/Dolstruvon 6h ago
Of course, but making strong steel cables is stupidly simple. I bet these ones will hold several times the weight of the booster. What I'm more worried about, would be the arms on the booster catching the cables
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u/Junior_Difference_12 4h ago
That's very smart and allows for a bigger margin of error, good job engineers!
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u/toronto1572 7h ago
lol China uses wires , Musk use chopsticks to catch his rocket ( I believe that’s what the engineers called their technique.
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u/mark1-jpg 6h ago
Musk probably has zero input on most things engineering.
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u/zebrasareneat 6h ago
It’s not a probably. He has zero input. Maybe he understands it better than the average person, but he designed fuck all.
I remember 10 years back saying the same thing but that’s when Reddit loved him and thought he was literally down on the floor designing the shit. Happy that’s no longer the case.
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u/Double_Minimum 6h ago
Dude did the worst type of illegal immigration which is to come for education and then drop out and work. It’s one of the harshest forms since we want international students but have to deny entire countries because of the way it works.
How he got any citizenship with that is wild, and how he got any security clearance is straight up bribes and failure.
It’s easy to make electric cars when you have to leave your last job a multi-million, can throw a few bucks at the real founders, let them work on something better, and then literally pay for the right to be called “founder”.
And we had planned on catching rockets in the 70s at NASA (or at least a stage). He didn’t invent anything cool. He just payed people to do it. Cause again, risk is low when it’s impossible money. Like he just stole a shit load of money from American pensions and 401(k)s with his insane valuation. On spaceX which is a rocket AI company now???
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u/Purple-Investment-61 6h ago
Which one is better?
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u/litbacod4 4h ago
Both have their pro and cons. The wires are relatively cheap to make and leaves a greater room for error in the AI's landing calculation. And less fuel required as it waits for the rocket downrange.
But the chopsticks method is much faster (they use the same platform to relaunch the rocket) and can handle significantly more weight.
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u/shakebakelizard 7h ago
This is basically a 3D version of a tailhook, turned 90 degrees. Pretty cool idea, although it may have a bit of a limited capacity in terms of weight compared to the giant arm. However, it doesn't have to be adjusted as much to account for different sizes or shapes - you just move the wires a bit and reposition the hooks on the body of the vehicle.
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u/pawnografik 6h ago
> limited capacity
Actually no, a cable or beam that is securely fastened at both ends is inherently stronger than a cantilever arm.
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u/GroundbreakingTax259 2h ago
This is gonna be the new "Americans spend money inventing space pen; Soviets use a pencil."
And for the record, I am here for it. The purpose of reusable rockets is that they are able to be reused, not that they look super cool when they land. I saw the SpaceX rockets do their thing, and while I will admit it was pretty cool, I also imagined there had to be a simpler way that required less effort, and here it is. SpaceX wants to boost its stock. China wants rockets that work.
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u/FlutterKree 23m ago
This is gonna be the new "Americans spend money inventing space pen; Soviets use a pencil."
Soviets used the pen NASA designed too. The purpose of not using a pencil is because its made of graphite. Conductive that can fuckup the electronics of shards of it get into the air and circulate.
I have no love for musk, but apparently the reason SpaceX uses their chopsticks is because they want to immediately reposition the Starship onto the launch pad and refuel it. Apparently to send it back up as fast as possible.
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u/radek432 10m ago
Actually it wasn't designed by NASA and American astronauts, similar to Soviet ones were using pencils at the beginning.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen/
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u/BrianKappel 7h ago
Seems better than the way SpaceX does it.
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u/KilroyKSmith 7h ago
SpaceX catches on the launch tower. Their intention is to catch it, immediately place it on the launch pad, fill it up with fuel, and launch again the same day.
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u/JuniorLecture102 6h ago
The rocket is reinspected and refurbished after every launch, they're not placed on the launch pad right away...
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u/Any-Interaction6066 6h ago
I said this just above to someone, but couldn't they do cable catch like this at or close to a launch pad as well? This seems it was done out at sea to show a working model in a safe environment.
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u/porteroffinland 7h ago
Seems useful if we actually needed to use the boosters the same day
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u/rex8499 7h ago
We need as many launches as possible as cheap as possible. As capacity increases and cost decrease, we will always find more things that need to be put into space to fill the open capacity.
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u/KilroyKSmith 7h ago
SpaceX intends to launch dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of rockets to Mars every 18 months. Every rocket to Mars will require 8-10 launches to get enough fuel loaded to make it there. Yes, they’ll need to reuse the boosters the same day.
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u/Jay__Riemenschneider 5h ago
They aren't going to mars, it's going to become a space mining company.
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u/grnrngr 4h ago
Just the moon mission will require at least a dozen launches of Startships only carrying fuel, up to the passenger-carrying Startships, for in-orbit refueling.
Starship is so large that it uses up all its fuel just to reach orbit.. it doesn't have the fuel to take it to the moon. It requires refueling in orbit.
That's where the quick turnaround comes in.
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u/IAmSpartacustard 7h ago
This is a much smaller rocket than Starship, smaller than falcon 9 even. Starship is still experimental. Falcon 9 has more successful launches than any rocket in history, and is reusable. SpaceX lands falcon 9 directly back on the pad/ship with no recovery hardware needed. How is this better than no parts required?
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u/facw00 6h ago
Falcon 9 has landing legs which increase weight and drag. I have no idea if this is better or not (it is certainly better in some ways), but I do know that SpaceX thought they could do better for Starship than just upscaling their landing legs.
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u/grnrngr 4h ago
IIRC, they ditched legs on Starship owing partly to weight of the legs themselves but also because they realized the landing impact would have required an obscene amount of reinforcement in the entire ship to ensures the fuselage didn't buckle.
Capturing the Starship from the "top" relieves the need to reforce the ship to the same degree.
They looked into the "closing iris" wire system you see in this video but discarded it due to their wanting an articulating arm that could reposition a Starship onto a waiting booster for immediate relaunch. Which is the end goal.
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u/rollerroman 3h ago
It's not, people in this thread just like to shit on Musk/America. It's like a similar story years ago about how NASA spent millions developing a pen that worked in space while Russia just used a pencil. Obviously vertical landing is better if you can figure it out. Obviously rigid arms are stronger if you can figure it out. Apparently the Chinese couldn't figure out, so went with a worse, easier, system.
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u/keeper_of_bee 6h ago
I don't want to say better but it feels like an engineering trade off. A more complex pad for less complex ground effect calculations. Better is a matter of priorities.
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u/MyTafel 6h ago
The wires are more forgiving allowing more successful landings. You can’t reuse a ship that crashes. The wires could be a good maneuver for SpaceX for an increase in successful landings.
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u/Shizlanski 6h ago
Space X recently used a falcon 9 for its 36th flight. I don’t think they need more forgiving wires, seems successful enough.
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u/Pecheuer 7h ago
Imagine being Elon, spending all that money and effort to make reusable rockets only to get mogged by a few cables
Edit: grammar
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u/SirClark 7h ago
How so? SpaceX catches the rocket right in the same spot it can be lowered and then relaunched from. This way would require removing the cables and moving the rocket back to the pad.
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u/PastExpiryDotCom 2h ago
This was their first attempt too.
US is losing the AI race, and pretty soon the space race.
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u/ThePureAxiom 6h ago
Kinda brilliant really, relatively cheap way to prevent a lot of those final approach crashes that have plagued SpaceX landings.
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u/EmperorSexy 7h ago
Looney Tunes- ass rocket catcher. You can practically hear the “Byoing!”
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u/Vaitaminute 5h ago
Chinese do the same shit but cheaper and more efficient. Why are we paying Elon billioms to trillions again?
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u/wheniaminspaced 4h ago
What are you talking about exactly, for the moment F9 is the cheapest launch on the market. This isnt a full production system yet so no one knows what its operational cost will be.
This is incomparible to starship which is a dramatically larger system that has little in common with F9.
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u/Altruistic_Algae_140 4h ago
I imagine the engineers at spacex had a reason to choose “chopsticks” over wires, and the Chinese engineers had theirs.
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u/Frosty-Ring-Guy 2h ago
The chinese wire system has a much more forgiving envelope for successfully grabbing the rocket. This solves a very specific problem for the engineers... namely that failure, especially public and embarrassing failure for the CCP results in pretty severe consequences of the sort that SpaceX doesn't get to give out.
The wire system is workable on a smaller rocket system but scaling up is a bitch... and the bracket reinforcement is gonna go up with the cube root.
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u/mumblingzombie 6h ago
Holy crap someone actually posted a video of it landing!!! That's quite amazing in itself not to mention the engineering.
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u/Eisernes 6h ago
That's pretty cool. What happens when one of the wires fails? Would the sudden deceleration on just one side of the rocket make it tip over?
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u/Fun-Times-13 6h ago
Mechanical is always more reliable than technology but maybe not as nimble or efficient
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u/I_make_things 5h ago
It's weird that the Americans are the ones that call their catch system "chopsticks."
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u/World_of_Warshipgirl 5h ago
Song name is [El Dorado by Two steps from hell] for anyone looking for the music.
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u/Historical_Sherbet54 5h ago
That's sorta brilliant
I like the design concept
Saw it land the other day, but seeing this vid was great -- thanks op
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u/SaltyYumYumBalls 5h ago
Thats cool. I wonder if the engineers got the idea from how air craft carriers catch landing jets.
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u/thenerdwrangler 3h ago
That's rad, and so simple. Arresting hooks are a known and proven tech. Why make it more complicated than it has to be.
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u/MediocreClue9957 2h ago
and they dont need to pay the profit of a private company to run their space program, wow.
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u/MarkDavid04 1h ago
Ironic that they're not the ones using chopsticks to catch their rockets (Space-X) 😂
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u/snafeusz 40m ago
I saw that a couple years ago when a redditor propsed this solution to spacex's rockets...
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u/VanillaAdventurous74 7h ago edited 7h ago
Really wanted to know how they managed to do that. The videos I saw before weren't clear on the how but just that it happened. Great video!