Name: SpaceX Caught a Rocket With ‘Chopsticks.’ What Will Musk Try Next? | WSJ
Uploaded: 2024-11-22T03:21:39.000Z
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It was one of the most remarkable displays of engineering prowess and recent memory.

Basic passive voice

On October 13th, SpaceX made history when the booster from its massive Starship rocket was caught by two mechanical arms dubbed Chopsticks as it descended back to the launch pad.

My first impression of Flight Test 5 was holy and maybe I'll end it there.

China hasn't done it, Russia hasn't done it.

Even President-elect Donald Trump weighed in.

And it wrapped those arms around it and it held it.

And just like you hold your baby at night.

Now, with Starship's next flight test just days away and SpaceX increasingly dominating the competition, here's why Starship is so important for the company and what the next flight could mean for the rocket's future.

Starship is a mammoth two-stage vehicle that stands at a height of almost 400 feet, making it the tallest rocket ever made.

The Starship spacecraft is the uppermost part that's designed to carry a crew of astronauts or satellites.

It sits atop a booster rocket called Super Heavy that is responsible for Starship's launch and initial ascent.

You know, SpaceX wants to use Starship for a lot of different types of missions.

For Starlink satellite launches, but also for moon missions, for sending people to Mars.

The latter, of course, being Musk's longtime dream.

CEO Elon Musk wants Starship to revolutionize spaceflight.

Core to that vision is the idea of reusability.

Reusability is the key to a great future in space.

We need reusability for rockets just like we have reusability for cars, for airplanes, for bicycles, for horses.

Reusability has been baked into Starship from the very beginning because you need reusability to both quickly and cost-effectively launch a ton of stuff, of mass, of cargo, future humans into space for all kinds of different missions.

To accomplish this, SpaceX plans to eventually capture the Starship spacecraft, the top part of the vehicle, and reuse it as well.

The idea is to narrow, is to make rocket transportation, rocket launching, more like that, and less this super unique event that requires hardware that you use once and don't use again.

Catching the booster was the primary goal of October's flight test, and SpaceX succeeded on its first attempt.

Propelled by 33 massive Raptor engines, Starship took off from its launch pad in South Texas.

After ascending to an altitude of about 43 miles above Earth, Starship's super-heavy booster separated from the Starship rocket.

The booster then flipped around and fired its Raptor engines to return to the launch site.

As the booster approached the launch pad, it slowed to a near hover and did a horizontal slide maneuver before being caught by two massive chopstick arms on the launch tower, dubbed Mechazilla.

Meanwhile, the Starship spacecraft continued flying on its own, using its six onboard engines to travel 132 miles above Earth before descending back down through the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX's successful catch of its Starship booster was a major achievement for the company and an engineering feat that showed how SpaceX is pushing the envelope on rocket technology.

When you think of a rocket, most of the rocket is the booster.

You need a lot of power to defeat gravity and get off of Earth and send something into space.

For decades, the most efficient way and safest way to do that, companies, governments found, was to build boosters that were used a single time.

Boosters would fly back into Earth and crash down in the ocean, and that would be the end of them.

SpaceX has already demonstrated the power of reusable boosters with its Falcon vehicles.

Rivals are pushing to add reusable systems to their rockets, too, and closely watching the company's work on Starship.

Flight Test 5, featuring this catch, was kind of a shot over the bow because it showed that making Starship real, making it operational, bringing it to the market, changing, potentially, assuming it all goes forward, the ability to get to space and how you get to space and what it costs to do that.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is developing a reusable booster for its new Glenn rocket that is slated to launch for the first time this month.

United Launch Alliance, the rocket operator owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is looking to recover the two engines that help power the first part of its new rocket, Vulcan Centaur.

Last year, Rocket Lab USA used an engine that had flown before on a flight of its Electron rocket and is working on a new vehicle called Neutron with a booster that it could use again.

SpaceX's progress has prompted interest in reusable boosters overseas as well.

A Chinese company said it is planning test flights for new reusable rockets in the next to develop its own reusable rocket.

But when it comes to reusability, SpaceX remains far ahead of the competition.

It's not that it's free to reuse a booster.

You have to make sure it's safe to fly again.

But they've demonstrated that these boosters can be used time and time again.

And that really helps SpaceX keep costs low.

And that's money they can use elsewhere in their business, namely for Starship right now.

While Musk is busy wielding his influence in the incoming Trump administration, his rocket company is forging ahead.

SpaceX plans to conduct a sixth Starship test flight in mid-November.

The November 18th flight test is, according to how the company has described it, going to be fairly similar to the most recent one.

So the company will try to catch the booster again.

It's going to be examining, you know, heat shield performance.

Again, working on relighting a Raptor engine while in space.

I don't think we're going to see a major new first time sort of engineering kind of moment the way, you know, we saw with the fifth flight test.

Although, you know, we also probably shouldn't take for granted just like catching the booster.

They're going to want to show that they can do it again and again and again.

Recently, SpaceX shared a picture of the Starship that will be used in flight test six.

Attached to its side is a piece of artwork, a smiling cartoon banana holding a banana, an apparent reference to the banana for scale joke that engineers often make.

In the near term, SpaceX says it wants Starship to deploy satellites.

NASA also wants to use a Starship variant as part of its Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon in 2026.

Ultimately, Musk says he wants Starship to make humanity multi-planetary by making long haul trips to Mars and back.

Eventually, history suggests there will be some some Tuesday event.

The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization and a multi-planet species, which I hope you would agree that is the right way to go.