SpaceX plans to become even more ambitious with its precise rocket landings.
Elon Musk’s company repairs and reuses the first phases of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, dropping boosters for soft vertical landings about 9 minutes after being lifted to the ground near the launch site or on autonomous “drones” in the ocean.
These touches are impressively precise. But SpaceX aims to achieve something truly amazing Starship, the next generation system the company develops to take people and payloads to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations.
Related: SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy rocket in photos
We’re going to try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load30 December 2020
“We’re going to try to catch the Super Heavy booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load,” Musk said via Twitter on December 30.
That’s right: SpaceX wants to bring Super Heavy, the giant first-phase of the two-stage Starship system, directly to the launch pad.
Musk het has expressed this ambition before, but last week’s tweet adds new wrinkles – for example, that Super Heavy would ideally be caught by the tower arm so that its touch would not really land at all. Unlike the first phases of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, Super Heavy will then not require landing legs. (Incidentally, the catching grid fins are waffle-like operating surfaces that help steer recurring rockets during precise touches.)
The newly announced strategy offers several key benefits, Musk said.
“Save the mass and cost of the legs and make it possible to place the booster on the launch pad immediately – ready to recharge within an hour,” he said in another tweet from December 30.
The upper stage of Starship is a 50 meter long spacecraft called (somewhat confusing) Starship. Both Starship and Super Heavy will be fully and quickly reusable, Musk stressed, potentially making the colonization of Mars and other ambitious reconnaissance economically feasible.
SpaceX has already built several Starship prototypes and flown from its South Texas plant near the Gulf Coast town of Boca Chica. Last month, for example, the SN8 (‘Serial No. 8’) vehicle soared to an estimated altitude of 12.5 kilometers and returned to Earth at the designated location. Although SN8 came in too fast and exploded into a massive fireball, Musk had the epic test flight a great success.
Another such leap should come soon: SpaceX recently moved SN9 to the launch pad. Like SN8, SN9 has three powerful Raptor engines, so the maximum altitude of its flight can also be in the range of 7.8 miles. (The three prototypes that flew before SN8 were single-engine vehicles that came just 150 meters from the ground.)
The last Starship vehicle will have six birds of prey, making it powerful enough to send itself off the moon and Mars (but not the earth). Super Heavy will have about 30 birds of prey, Musk said. Although the Starship program has so far spent most of its time building and testing prototypes of the spaceship, it appears the construction of the first Super Heavy prototype is now underway.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.