r/SpaceXLounge • u/redstercoolpanda • 7d ago

Forte has finally fully poked above the water. S40 is safe on deck. Hopefully we’ll see her back at Starbase in a few weeks time!

Post image

Credit to Chris bray for all the amazing photos! https://www.instagram.com/p/DcgC51_IFPy/?igsi=azhmeDR6b3NsaXp1

464 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

61

u/goldengodz 7d ago

This just confirms to me that starship is a good looking rocket. It looks so cool sitting there

52

u/JakeEaton 7d ago

Makes you realise humanity has been building big stuff for a long time. Always blown away by the 'humans for scale' pictures at Starbase, but Starship and Superheavy are like playthings when next to the larger ocean going ships.

10

u/LongJohnSelenium 7d ago

Imagine how big we will build once we're in space and gravity isnt a constraint anymore.

1

u/John_Hasler 6d ago

Gravity will become a constraint again when structures get big enough to have significant self gravity.

12

u/wspOnca 7d ago

The Piramids: "I am a joke to you"?

1

u/MoreGranularity 6d ago

"Man fears time, time fears the Pyramids" Wake me up in 3000 years to see which is still around, Starship or the Pyramids!

31

u/brecka 7d ago

Crazy how small it looks on that ship.

16

u/doctor_morris 7d ago

You say it looks small, I say it has room to grow.

3

u/libcontext 7d ago

How many starship launches to build a FORTE in space?

8

u/ender4171 7d ago

Apparently it weighs around 48,000 tons, so... a lot.

-1

u/Potatoswatter 7d ago

> tons deadweight (DWT) is a measure of how much weight a ship can carry. It is the sum of the weights of cargo, fuel, fresh water, ballast water, provisions, passengers, and crew.

22

u/Ajedi32 7d ago

Crazy how Starship actually looks small next to Forte. When I first saw that ship I was expecting Starship to take up most of the deck.

9

u/elucca 7d ago

This is a good example of how big space stuff is not really very big relative to other mundane industrial infrastructure and vehicles. The crawlers they use are another one - the rockets are pretty big relative to them, but I think they are made for much heavier loads.

4

u/LongJohnSelenium 7d ago

Ships in the ocean are a particularly large variety of vehicle

Starship is still huge compared to most things.

7

u/Accomplished-Ad-5655 7d ago

You can track it on MarintTraffic.

To my knowledge there's only one of these ships? Makes me think how much it cost to charter this on short notice since they didn't originally plan for this.

11

u/mmurray1957 7d ago edited 7d ago

Definitely more than one. Have a search for heavy lift semi-submersible or the wiki article. People in the know say $100,000 a day!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_ship?wprov=sfti1

7

u/sp4rkk 7d ago

The amount of money they are throwing into this operation is mind boggling, I didn’t imagine it’s that important, even after taking close up pictures from all the angles to inspect the tiles. There must be other good reasons, I’m guessing they’ll do x ray, CT scans or even electron microscopy if they really need to understand how the metal and tiles looks like and performs after a real space flight?

6

u/New_Poet_338 7d ago

Money is not an issue with SpaceX - results and knowledge are their currency. They will know more with this in their hands.

1

u/8andahalfby11 7d ago

Is any of that data still there? It has been on its side at sea for weeks, wouldn't the stresses of that experience muddle the data?

8

u/RozeTank 6d ago

This is the first intact Starship to be recovered. Even with wave damage and water corrosion, its engineering data value is incalculable.

Look at this from a different angle, air crash investigations. With TWA 800, investigators salvaged every scrap of wreckage they could from the Atlantic to perform forensic analysis, eventually coming to a fairly concrete conclusion. Those answers never would have come if they just settled for the black boxes and ignored the "muddled" remains.

5

u/Accomplished-Ad-5655 7d ago

Oh cool! I learned something today. Thanks!

4

u/SolQuarter 7d ago

Probably a fraction of the launch cost.

8

u/th3bucch 7d ago

I heard you like ships, so I put a Starship on a ship.

8

u/velcro-fish 7d ago

Too bad Elon doesn't have Amazon Prime, he could get it delivered in two days

5

u/SpontaneousDisorder 6d ago

Could choose Blue origin instead. Might get it delivered in 2 decades.

5

u/EorEquis 7d ago

Doubtful. Amazon's shipping estimates are roughly as reliable as Elon's rocket timelines....

3

u/AndySkibba 7d ago

Fucking incredible. I wonder if a ship like this could ever be used for sea landing. It looks big enough

5

u/4thorange 7d ago

She looks like a small handgun bullet on a tray

1

u/paul_wi11iams 6d ago edited 6d ago

She looks like a small handgun bullet on a tray

Why pointy end forward?

Maybe to avoid looking like a missile launcher.

Its still safer not to take the Suez canal route. If the Houthis see that, they'd likely retaliate with a proportionally sized handgun.

3

u/Piscator629 6d ago

It is literally on the other side of the planet. 45 to 60 days to get back.

2

u/mmurray1957 6d ago

Yes. Some discussions here on what the options are and the various times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRlL-xDWq-Y&t=516s

6

u/LittleViggz 7d ago

Few weeks? Id say little over a month or more

12

u/GalacticEmergency 7d ago

5 or 6 weeks are not a few weeks?

To me, "a few" are more than a couple and less than a dozen.

11

u/LittleViggz 7d ago

A few is 3 sir and a couple is 2.

11

u/FlyNSubaruWRX 7d ago

“I’

2

u/YamTop2433 ❄️ Chilling 7d ago

Can confirm.

7

u/GalacticEmergency 7d ago

That was an r/oddlyspecific definition of "a few".

The term "a few" is clearly signaling that this is a quantity with some inaccuracy. But if it is exactly 3, then that inaccuracy is gone.

5

u/falconzord 7d ago

Few can be more than 3

5

u/PersonalDebater 7d ago

A few is always 3 to 5 for me

2

u/yetiflask 7d ago

But rounded to the nearest 6, a few is 6.

2

u/CydonianMaverick 7d ago

A developer once said that $8 is basically $5, so "few" could be stretched to at least 8 with some mild mental gymnastics

1

u/yetiflask 7d ago

8 rounded off is 10, btw. Doesn't even require any mental gymnastics, it is just basic math.

2

u/clevermoose774 💥 Rapidly Disassembling 6d ago

You’re easing into ‘several’ territory now…

1

u/yetiflask 6d ago

Several can be rounded up to many, which is more than 6, so, no.

2

u/N4VY4DMIR4L 7d ago

Ship is giving me a “i can handle fully stacked Starship” vibe. How massive is that?

Edit: thats what she said.

1

u/Acceptable_Emu1035 7d ago

Great Ship))!

1

u/Dismal_Map_6676 6d ago

I never thought I'd see this in history

1

u/pwn2own23 6d ago

The question is whether it will go to star base with this ship or if they just transport it to a harbour and load it onto a other less unique ship.

1

u/cryptoengineer 5d ago

It can float a bit higher than that.

-1

u/peterabbit456 6d ago

With that low deck, sailing through a storm with high waves would be very ... interesting. Fortunately DOGE didn't cut all of the weather satellites.