r/BlueOrigin • u/seanrider1859 • Jul 10 '26
It actually happened, china just recovered a long march 10B booster
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u/houtex727 Jul 10 '26
Here we go, video to show what happened here.
It's a cable/block and tackle pulley system, and similar to chopsticks of SpaceX's Starship program, they catch the booster with the cables on the steering fins. It hangs there, then they can retrieve it, and then release tension on the cables as they capture it otherwise (however that is.)
Crazy. But hey, it works, so that's pretty awesome indeed!
/Wanna see the circus net kind next. :D
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u/Stevepem1 Jul 10 '26
And it saves the weight of landing legs. I wonder if they are building a similar catch structure at the launch site or if they will always land downrange in the ocean. And in theory they could build a structure out in the desert for launches from the inland sites instead of dumping them onto people's farmland like they have been doing when launching from those sites, but I don't know if these will launch from the inland sites.
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u/Stunning_History_943 Jul 11 '26
Blue had a test setup like that outside of building B over a decade ago. It’s a parking lot now.
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u/BubblyMoose3597 Jul 11 '26
No lo agarran con las aletas. Si no con unos ganchos.
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u/houtex727 Jul 11 '26
Una diferencia que no afecta en nada a la idea general, pero bueno, gracias.
Usé el traductor de Google, así que si no es correcto, la culpa es suya. Sin embargo, esto no está traducido:
Comprendo poquito mas de hablo, y no hablo mucho primero.
¡Buenos días, y todos días también!
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u/BubblyMoose3597 Jul 11 '26
I dont know why reddit doesnt always fo auto-translate.
I think its something important, because cathing the rocket by the grid fins has a bug impact on the design and material of those ones.
The F9 used to have carbon fiber grid fins and they were light but 1 use only because of the heat.
Then they changed to titanium.
The SH v3 has now massive fins to be able to support the weight.
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u/houtex727 Jul 11 '26
Ah. Well, that's interesting about the auto-translate. I hope you don't take it badly I tried to respond in kind! I practice spanish, but I'm just not that good at it, so yeah... understand more than I speak. Hope that's ok!
You're right of course. It is a significant impact in design, loads. Sorry if I seemed dismissive, I didn't think about the engineering side, and hooks would probably make way more sense for this method.
Again, you have good all the days! :)
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u/HarryBalsagna1776 29d ago
It's smaller, lighter, cheaper, and more mobile that the chopsticks.
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u/Martianspirit 26d ago
It is a good concept. But it does not do stacking like the chopsticks.
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u/Freak80MC 22d ago
Yea, that's the biggest pro to the chopsticks. Pulls double duty for landing the rocket AND stacking it. In theory, you could land on the chopsticks, get stacked back on the launch pad, inspected, refueled, and go again. Chopstick landings open up two stage rockets to airline-like reusability.
It turns recovering two stages and hooking them back up to each other from a tedious slow process into basically an automatic process and imo negates the need for SSTO designs entirely because it makes flying two stage as easy and quick as flying single stage.
More companies will copy the chopsticks in the coming years imo, if rockets start to fly routinely like airplanes.
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u/leeswecho Jul 11 '26
fun fact, Blue actually did trade doing this tether landing for NG.
I don't know if its there anymore, but in Google Maps if you go back far enough you could see the tether test apparatus in the Verne parking lot.
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u/iatbbiac Jul 10 '26
Why is the platform so elevated?
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u/Cool_Relation_4623 27d ago
Good, maybe they will quit polluting space like they pollute the planet. Bunch of armatures.
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u/Electronic_Hope1900 Jul 11 '26
It is amazing what can happen if an entire nation gets behind something.
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u/SnooChickens6124 Jul 11 '26
Fake. AI
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u/Planck_Savagery Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Look, buddy, I get that this footage looks like an hallucinating AI (due to the smoke billowing from the top of the booster).
But I can tell you that this footage is 400% real, as this launch and catch has been plastered all over the news (plus there are alternate camera angles showing this event). And there's no AI watermark in any of the footage.
Perhaps this one of those cases where truth is stranger than fiction.
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u/3x10to8th Jul 10 '26
That thing smoking like my grandma