There and Back Again

I awoke yesterday at dawn in a log cabin in Vermont. Fortunately, the wifi was good.

Each successive test of the SpaceX Superheavy Starship has been a significant improvement over the previous one, and test five was no exception, with both the booster and the ship demonstrating soft pinpoint landings — except this time, the booster falling from the edge of space was caught in mid air by the mechazilla launch tower itself!

Software controls and coordinates the booster’s position, velocity, and orientation, as well as the chopstick‘s height and opening angle, moving a single point in an abstract parameter space, to smoothly join booster to tower. This thrilling and unprecedented engineering achievement was another big step toward perfecting history’s most powerful and reusable launch system, a potentially transformative technology.

SpaceX Texas Starbase launch tower catches a Superheavy booster returning from the edge of space after propelling a Starship to a pinpoint soft landing in the Indian Ocean, 2024 October 13. (SpaceX multiple exposure photograph.)