It was a blazing start to a Sunday for Space X CEO Elon Musk.
SpaceX successfully intercepted the returning booster back of its Starship rocket by using the mechanical arms in its launch pad.
Seven minutes after its launch, the Starship rocket’s returning booster was safely caught by the mechanical arms of its launch pad. The launch tower sported monstrous metal arms, dubbed chopsticks, that caught the descending 232-foot (71-meter) booster.
Elon Musk shared a spectacular video on X, deemed a technological marvel.
Starship rocket booster caught by tower pic.twitter.com/aOQmSkt6YE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2024
Elon Musk Explains How It Worked
Elon Musk shared another video explaining how Space X’s Mechazilla can catch the Super Heavy booster.
Elon Musk explains exactly how Space X’s Mechazilla can catch the Super Heavy booster.
On Sunday morning, Space X successfully caught a 20+ story tall rocket booster.
“This is a custom-built tower with arms that are designed to catch the largest flying and heaviest flying… pic.twitter.com/7rwHnXDk2d
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 13, 2024
“Space X successfully caught a 20+ story tall rocket booster. This is a custom-built tower with arms designed to catch the largest flying and heaviest flying object ever made and pluck it outta the air.”
Musk admits that they will try to make a lighter one next time.
“It’ll weigh about 250 tons. We’ll make that lighter over time. So you got a couple hundred tons plummeting at more than half the speed of sound. So this thing is still coming in really fast.
Pretty much down in a downward direction. So then, they light the engines. So it’s got to slow itself down very fast and correct any error. Whatever X-Y error is when the engines land, it’s got to take out that x-y error and then drop the velocity to basically zero and come in between the arms. The arms will be wide, and as it’s coming in, the arms will close, go flush against the side of the vehicle, and the vehicle will descend through the arms.”
So, what are the possible outcomes? Musk confesses,
“Success is one of the possible outcomes. The probability is uncertain, but it is above zero.”
