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NASA's Europa Clipper Launch

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217 points belter | 1 comments | 14 Oct 24 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.303s | source
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sidcool ◴[14 Oct 24 16:14 UTC] No.41838932[source]▶
Are the side boosters going to be recovered?
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benjismith ◴[14 Oct 24 16:16 UTC] No.41838957[source]▶
Nope. They needed the maximum amount of thrust from those boosters in order to propel the spacecraft toward Jupiter, so they couldn't save enough fuel for the boosters to land themselves. This was the 6th flight of these boosters, so we thank them for their service!
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linotype ◴[14 Oct 24 16:36 UTC] No.41839149[source]▶
Is this one of those things that’s limited by physics or at some point will these kinds of missions be doable with a mostly reusable setup?
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1. malfist ◴[14 Oct 24 16:41 UTC] No.41839217[source]▶
It's the tyranny of the rocket equation. The more you send up, the more fuel you need to send up and then you need to send fuel to lift that fuel and then fuel to lift that fuel and so on.

Since you have to have a burn to slow down and land you have to carry extra fuel to recover. That's always going to be the case, but starship is making strides towards minimizing that as much as possible with belly flops and chopsticks