Opinion: Elon Musk’s Starship booster catch will change spaceflight forever

On Sunday, October 13, 2024, SpaceX achieved something never before.
Spectators watched as Super Heavy—the first stage of the world’s most powerful rocket, Starship—fell from the sky just a few minutes after launch. The massive rocket booster, the size of a 20-story building, left a condensation trail during its dramatic descent.

Before it could crash into the ground, three of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines roared to life to initiate a descent burn. Crowds then gasped and cheered in disbelief as Super Heavy nimbly hovered into the metallic grasp of Mechazilla’s mechanical “chopstick” arms.

It’s a moment for the history books. If Elon Musk’s vision for colonizing Mars comes true, the first Super Heavy mid-air capture will likely become a turning point. It’s a massive win for the Starship program, which has faced scrutiny after NASA’s Artemis lunar landings were moved back partly due to Starship development delays.

Oddly, it comes when one of Elon Musk’s other companies, Tesla, faces criticism, with people describing its new products as vaporware. While political division drives much of the discourse surrounding Musk’s ventures, the Starship Super Heavy capture transcends the political divide. It’s a historic feat of engineering that could benefit all of humanity.

Elon Musk’s “crazy” idea becomes reality

Before we go into detail on the catch itself, let’s talk about the audacity of the catch.

Shortly after SpaceX captured Super Heavy using Mechazilla, several engineers gathered their thoughts on the milestone achievement. One of those, Tom Mueller, was the lead designer on the Merlin engines that powered SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

“Epic moment! I remember the meeting where Elon said we’re not gonna have landing legs,” Mueller wrote on X . “We’re gonna catch the booster in the air, and we were all like what??”

Even Musk acknowledges it was a crazy idea. In a 2021 interview with YouTuber Everyday Astronaut, the SpaceX CEO explained that the company would use Mechazilla to catch Super Heavy out of the sky.

“I know it sounds insane,” he said at the time. “When I suggested that, people thought I lost my mind. Maybe I have. It might take a few kicks at the can, but we’ll get it right.”

Fast forward to October 13, 2024; amazingly, it only took one try to get it right. Luck may have played a small part, but SpaceX’s expertise undeniably played a larger role. The private company has a strong track record of launching and landing its Falcon 9 rocket boosters. To date, it has performed more than 350 successful Falcon 9 landings.

SpaceX is also rewarded for its fail-fast, learn-fast approach. The company takes risks, knowing several Starship prototypes are waiting in the wings. It has already performed a static fire test on the upper stage that will be used for flight 6.

Why catch a rocket at all?

The reason SpaceX, or rather, Elon Musk, decided to catch Super Heavy out of the sky is down to mass. In rocketry, little is more important than managing the mass of a spacecraft. As mentioned before, Starship is roughly the size of a 20-story building.

The lower the empty weight at launch, the more payload Starship can carry. So any method that would allow SpaceX’s engineers to reduce the weight of Starship is appreciated. In the case of rocket capture, using Mechazilla to pluck Starship out of the sky removes the need for heavy landing legs that could weigh more than 10 tons.

Catching Starship is also in line with Musk’s audacious plans to have the massive rocket land and take off again within a short time span. Once Starship is caught, it can quickly be placed back onto the launch mount for inspection, refueling, and relaunch.

Musk referred to these plans shortly after flight 5. Following an inspection of the Super Heavy booster, he explained that “Starship is designed to achieve reflight of its rocket booster ultimately within an hour after liftoff. The booster returns within ~5 minutes, so the remaining time is reloading propellant and placing a ship on top of the booster.”

Starship milestone transcends political divide

Nowadays, it’s hard to separate Elon Musk’s achievements from the political division surrounding the companies attached to his name. It’s hard to argue that Musk hasn’t created this problem for himself—since Musk bought Twitter, he has stoked division and emboldened far-right rioters on his platform.

Much of his work is met with a politically motivated backlash caused by understandable concerns over his actions on X. The reactions to Musk’s new Tesla Robotaxi, Robovan, and Optimus robot reveal, for example, were muted compared to that of Cybertruck when Musk was viewed differently in the public sphere.

Part of this may be due to the fact that those Optimus robots were secretly—and quite sneakily —assisted by remote human operators. It’s also likely due to Musk’s social media antics in recent months.

However, in the case of the impressive Super Heavy capture, some put political allegiances aside to congratulate Musk. American businessman Mark Cuban, for example, congratulated Musk on X , stating that it was an “incredible” achievement. The two have had several public spats on social media. Social media was full of similar examples – though President Joe Biden notably released no statement regarding the historic achievement.

Ultimately, the capture of Super Heavy is an incredibly important win for the US. Once Starship is operational, humans will finally return to the lunar surface. For those who believe in the importance of humanity going multi-planetary, this will be an important milestone for all humanity.