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SpaceX launches starship Mega-Rocket and catches its booster in midair on first try.
(www.smithsonianmag.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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I can't believe how little news coverage there has been about this. Seeing that thing land was probably the most impressive thing I've ever seen.
It's difficult for the average person to really understand why this is a major innovation. Showed this to my parents and my dad's comment was "haven't they already done this?". If you don't realize it's a different rocket it does look basically the same as what they've been doing for years now.
I think the average person gets it right. It's a nice feat to catch the booster and it will save money. But that's a side quest. The main quest of getting an actual load to orbit and beyond is still pretty far away. At least compared with the official time line where they wanted to achieve much more than that three years ago.
It's not just saving a little money. If this works, it will drop costs by another order of magnitude. Falcon 9 already dropped a zero, Starship will likely drop it by another zero even without this, and consistently being able to do this catch would mean another zero. That's getting to $20/kg to LEO, vs $150/kg without it on Starship.
That kind of cost will enable things that were completely infeasible before.
I didn't say "a little" money. It may be important or critical for the business but from a technical perspective, demonstrating how it can safely bring loads up and down decides whether the whole concept is actually feasible. That's when people will start to get excited.