Month: January 2021

Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 will bring 5G to budget phones

Qualcomm’s expanding its line of 5G-enabled smartphone chips with its first Snapdragon 400 series processor equipped with a 5G modem. The Qaulcomm Snapdragon 480 processor is an 8nm octa-core processor designed for entry-level and mid-range phon…

Qualcomm’s expanding its line of 5G-enabled smartphone chips with its first Snapdragon 400 series processor equipped with a 5G modem. The Qaulcomm Snapdragon 480 processor is an 8nm octa-core processor designed for entry-level and mid-range phones, and it features a Qualcomm Snapdragon X51 5G modem with support for peak download speeds up to 2.5 Gbps and peak […]

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Bayern: Computational thinking im weltweiten Leuchtturm

Nur ein kleiner Schritt vom Totalausfall bis zum Größenwahn: Kommentar zu den bayerischen Plänen zur Digitalisierung der Schulen. Deutschlandweit ist neben der Verlängerung des Lockdowns offenbar vor allem Distanzunterricht geplant

Nur ein kleiner Schritt vom Totalausfall bis zum Größenwahn: Kommentar zu den bayerischen Plänen zur Digitalisierung der Schulen. Deutschlandweit ist neben der Verlängerung des Lockdowns offenbar vor allem Distanzunterricht geplant

SpaceX may try to catch a falling rocket with a launch tower

At first blush, this sounds insane.

SpaceX's Starship is expected to have landing legs. Its first stage launch vehicle, Super Heavy, may not.

Enlarge / SpaceX's Starship is expected to have landing legs. Its first stage launch vehicle, Super Heavy, may not. (credit: SpaceX)

To build a fully reusable launch system for its interplanetary Starship vehicle, SpaceX has had to solve myriad technical challenges, such as slowing the massive spacecraft down as it reenters Earth's atmosphere at near-orbital velocities.

But perhaps the biggest challenge—as always, with rockets—is fairly mundane: its mass. The goal with a rocket is to build the lightest possible vehicle with the greatest amount of performance. In theory, it sounds simple. But in practice, containing volatile liquids at high pressures is anything but simple. And with a fully reusable launch system, SpaceX has the added challenge of building vehicles that can withstand the rigor of launch, perform in a vacuum, and then return screaming through the atmosphere to land back at sea-level pressures.

The need to build light, strong, and adaptable vehicles sometimes leads to interesting design choices. At the end of 2020, SpaceX founder Elon Musk took to his favorite social network, Twitter, to share one of them with his followers. "We’re going to try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load," he said. The Super Heavy rocket, likely to have about 28 Raptor engines, will launch Starship into Earth orbit.

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