Starship V's Miracle Flight

Aerospace and Defense SpaceX Does Something Amazing in Its Fifth Starship Test By Al Root Follow Oct 13, 2024, 10:20 am EDT SpaceX tested its Starship launch system for the fifth time on Sunday. (Courtesy SpaceX) SpaceX tested its huge Starship launch system again. The test was incredible. At about 8:25 a.m. Eastern time Sunday, SpaceX launched its huge Starship for the fifth time. This time, however, the commercial space pioneer completed another first. It caught its Super Heavy booster rocket out of midair with a giant mechanical arm on the launch tower as the rocket returned to Earth. Advertisement - Scroll to Continue That’s right. It caught a rocket … out of midair … that was just in space … as it fell back to Earth. Of course, the rocket boosters slowed and controlled the descent as the rocket approached the launch tower. “This is absolutely insane!” and “Are you kidding me?” were two comments from the broadcast crew. It was thrilling to watch. About 1.8 million viewers were watching the SpaceX broadcast at the time of the catch. As of 8:50 a.m., the test was ongoing with Starship in orbit. Viewership had reached about 2.6 million. Starship is the largest rocket launch system ever developed. It’s designed to be fully reusable—a step forward for SpaceX, which pioneered reusable rockets but now only reuses the lower half of its Falcon launch systems. Reusing more parts, and the increased payload capacity of Starship, means lower costs to reach orbit. SpaceX has landed its Falcon rocket booster stage 352 times. The Super Heavy booster—the part caught in what SpaceX described as a chopsticks maneuver—is the lower half of the rocket equipped with 33 rocket engines. Starship is the upper half of the launch system, designed to carry up to 150 metric tons into space. That’s more than twice the payload capacity of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch system. More capacity benefits SpaceX, which launches rockets regularly to build its Starklink global Wi-Fi network, as well as anyone else looking to reach orbit. Advertisement - Scroll to Continue SpaceX’s first test of Starship in April 2023 ended with an explosion, as did the second test that November. The third test, in March 2024, reached orbit before the ship was lost. The fourth flight test, this past June, included a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico for the Super Heavy booster and a controlled re-entry of Starship. The fifth test will be remembered for the catch. The company’s development pathway, which includes a willingness to fail impressively, has yielded steady gains and rapidly dropping costs.