Watching starship rollout and I can’t help but think this must be extremely dangerous and easy to tip over [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB_QrA-w6Gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB_QrA-w6Gs)
Also when they haul a giant windmill blade:
[https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/vpdqb2tnzcsaccild9yz.png](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/vpdqb2tnzcsaccild9yz.png)
Almost looks physically impossible. Is the trick just that the vehicle itself is insanely heavy so it keeps the center of gravity low? Are they doing some extra trickery to keep them safe?
In: Physics
The trucks doing the transporting are significantly heavier than you expect, and the objects being transported are wayyyyy lighter than you expect. Wind turbines and rocket ships both want to be as light as possible.
For reference, a 50 meter long wind turbine blade should only weigh about 13 tons. The tractor of a big semitruck can weigh 10 tons by itself, a long bed low to the ground and built for moving this stuff will be significantly heavier than the blade and able to keep the center of mass nicely centered between the wheels
The Starship is going to be moved empty and without engines so its going to be closer to 60 tons, the Raptor engines each weigh 1.5 tons and the fuel brings the whole thing close to 1300 which is why its done in the smaller stage. You can also see that wide crawler has massive weights stacked on the front and rear.
“Will this thing topple over” is probably the best understood portion of engineering that Starship is working with and the easiest to fix, just tie it to that trailer real good and put as many weights as you have lying around on that trailer and drive real slow.
The vehicle drives very slowly on flat ground. They use hydraulics to keep the bed level at all times. Iirc, the saturn v’s hauler had a bigger engine for its hydraulic pumps than it did to actually move its wheels.
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