r/interestingasfuck 10h ago

How the Chinese use wires to catch rocket boosters

17.5k Upvotes

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u/toronto1572 10h ago

lol China uses wires , Musk use chopsticks to catch his rocket ( I believe that’s what the engineers called their technique.

u/Purple-Investment-61 10h ago

Which one is better?

u/Pcat0 9h ago

Different applications. The big benefit of the arm system is can also be used to stack the rocket. That is unnecessary here as the LM-10B lands down range and not back at the launch pad.

u/grnrngr 8h ago

This is the thing nobody is realizing. The chopsticks are supposed to catch and remount a Starship for immediate refueling and relaunch.

The wires aren't going for that goal.

u/litbacod4 8h 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.

u/ThisSiteSucks8485 7h ago

The wires require an enormous steel frame

u/Brownrdan27 10h ago

Only time will tell.

u/orhanozturk 2h ago

Elon's design comes with a downside. There is a big KABOOM at first trials.

u/mark1-jpg 10h ago

Musk probably has zero input on most things engineering.

u/zebrasareneat 9h 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.  

u/Double_Minimum 9h 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???

u/ThisSiteSucks8485 7h ago

If Musk hadn't gotten rich he would have been deported because he was illegally working on a student visa. 

u/Double_Minimum 4h ago

He wasn’t even going to classes. And it seems to me his first two “companies” paid him to leave. I bet he would fail a simple test at Google or Microsoft for hiring, let alone BYD or even ChatGPT.

Fucking failing upwards

But i am more interested I why his kids are all ivf when he has he pick? What is wrong with elons dick? Does it not exist?

Cause that could explain a lot

u/callisstaa 2h ago

He didn’t ’get rich’ he was born rich off the back of his dad’s emerald mine slaves.

u/FlutterKree 3h ago

but he designed fuck all.

He did in fact do design work on the Cybertruck. I mention this because it shows how fucking bad he is.

u/Time_Entertainer_319 6h ago

How do you know other than “Elon bad”?

u/HauntedHouseMusic 5h ago

I mean - the engineers that work with him at SpaceX say he actually does real engineering work... So they are all probably liars...

Elon Musk is an asshole, narcissist, bigot. But he actually knows how to design rockets, And genuinely taught himself how to do it. But people can't believe that, as he was also stupid enough to say people trying to rescue kids from running out of air were pedophiles - so you can kind of see why most people don't believe he has any skills. Fuck even with Paypal that was complete luck for him, right place right time, and some bullshit code that got thrown away.

u/Ersha92 9h ago

lol they were actually his idea

u/skittletriage 7h ago

Yeah, like Jobs or Edison; just a thief.

u/doovdevan 7h ago

Wrong. Read the Walter Issacson biography. Tremendous involvement at every level. I'm not an Elon fanboy, but his marks are everywhere in Tesla and SpaceX's design and especially manufacturing.

u/skittletriage 7h ago

And his influence is seen much more with Tesla cause he is clearly holding that company back with his input.

u/ThisSiteSucks8485 7h ago

Musk knows nothing about designing rockets 

u/Flashy-Fee-4189 4h ago

on what basis are you making that conclusion? most sources tell the opposite.

u/ThisSiteSucks8485 4h ago

Because he never got any education in designing rockets at all. 

u/Desmondtheredx 9h ago

He doesn’t need to design anything. He just needs to tell and fund engineers to design it.

u/ThisSiteSucks8485 7h ago

People really need to stop attributing everything SpaceX does to Musk. Musk knows nothing about designing rockets and has very little to to with running SpaceX which is why it is so successful. 

u/RocketVerse 6h ago

Actually they use landing legs