It’s no secret that SpaceX has big plans for its massive mega-rocket, Starship, which has undergone five test flights since April last year. The largest rocket ever built, Starship is a giant rocket that will play a key role in ongoing efforts to send humans to other planets. Last weekend, SpaceX completed the first of many Starship booster catches. This changes everything about the future of space travel.
Starship has had a somewhat tumultuous journey since its first launch ended in an in-flight explosion. Since then, SpaceX has ironed out some glitches and conducted four additional test flights, the most recent of which took place on Sunday, October 13th. The second, third and fourth flights were impressive in themselves and were all “successful”. ” According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, this fifth flight did something different.
This time, SpaceX tried to catch a Starship rocket booster that had fallen to the ground. But rather than simply landing autonomously on a boat at sea, SpaceX raised the bar a bit by having a tower launched by Starship catch the booster with a series of mechanical arms. This represents a major feat that will completely change the face of future human space travel.
Now, that may sound like just a buzzword, but let’s be honest, it probably would be in any other company. But SpaceX has consistently demonstrated a renewed vigor for space travel and innovation when it comes to such successes. And if you can catch the booster of a giant rocket like Starship right where it takes off, you can save a lot of travel time getting it back to where it needs to be for the next launch.
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This could mean faster launches than currently seen from Starship rockets, and would enable more missions beyond the normal range. This kind of thing could prove especially useful with NASA’s Artemis mission, which will rely on a version of Starship to deliver astronauts to the moon for the first time since the 1970s. A more effective catch system for the Starship booster could theoretically allow SpaceX to outperform NASA’s current SLS system, which has already proven to be expensive and unwieldy. be.
But this isn’t an entirely new idea either. SpaceX has been recovering boosters from several other rockets for about nine years. These captures are impressive, but as mentioned above, they usually take place at sea or on concrete slabs miles from the launch pad. But this time, SpaceX performed the feat directly on the launch pad. This will significantly reduce the time required for booster recovery.
And Starship will also eventually take part in SpaceX’s plans to land humans on Mars, and being able to capture Starship’s boosters will hopefully allow for a more timely mission, possibly That would pave the way for weekly launches at that point.
