SpaceX BOLD NEW Plans To Catch Super Heavy

Superheavy is the massive first-stage rocket for SpaceX’s Starship and there are now bold new plans to, “Catch,” it when it returns to Earth.

How Superheavy Works
As the first-stage rocket for Starship, Superheavy is routinely recovered and reused. The boosters come down for soft vertical landings after assisting the upper part of Starship to achieve orbit. Starship will go to the Moon, and possibly even Mars and Superheavy then carefully returns on landing pads or drone ships with precision. However, back on December 30th of 2020 Musk revealed a wild-sounding new plan.

A Plan to Capture Superheavy
"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 announced on Twitter on Dec. 30. What does that mean, exactly? Well, Musk wants to bring Superheavy down directly onto the launch stand, with it caught by a tower arm so that its landings aren’t really, “Landings,” at all. This method would not require landing gear as instead there will be grid fins on Superheavy that allow it to be caught and double as a way to steer during the precise touchdowns! Why do this plan, however?

Benefits of Capturing Superheavy
Musk himself has stated that by having the Superheavy be caught it saves mass from the legs and the cost of the legs. Therefore, Superheavy then could be immdiately respoitioned with its booster on teh launch mount and be refueld and ready to fly again in, “...under an hour.” Superheavy and Starship are already reusable, but saving money from eliminating the legs and boosting the efficiency of Superheavy makes it an even better first-stage booster. As Musk hopes for regular trips to space to become commonplace for humanity, he has hitned that his long-term vision is to increase production of the Starship to the point where they can build 100 a year for around ten years. This would make a fleet of 1,000. Such a fleet could transport 100 megatons of cargo or around 100,000 people to Mars every 26 months or so as that is when Earth and Mars are closet in their orbits. This would result in a lot of Starships with many Superheavys flying up and returning to Earth--it would be busy! Things would need to be busy for Musk to realize his dream of constructing a colony on Mars by the late 2020s.

How Would Capturing Superheavy Actually Work?
The launch tower would have a harness that could grab the Superheavy booster after it boosted back to Earth and lowered itself into the harness’s arms. The Superheavy would be sure to position itself very carefully so that as it returns to Earth it gently is caught by the harness. This would not be a case where it is just free-falling back to the planet after helping put a Starship in orbit. It would use its boosters to carefully reposition itself and slowly descent back to where it needs to be for the harness to grab it--this would be a very detailed process, not just a rocket plunging back down to Earth in hopes of getting caught! After capturing Superheavy, the harness would lower the booster back onto the landing pad and therefore this would eliminate the need for landing legs. Such an elmination would also increase the odds of a safe recovery as some tests of boosters returning to landing pads have had less-than-desired explosive results. In those failures everything has always gone well until the actual touchdown where issues have occurred. By eliminating the need to actually touchdown that makes everything much safer and productive.

What Use Would Capturing Superheavy Be Once it is Possible?
There would be many benefits to having Superheavy be captured once such a system could be in place. SpaceX could easily start deploying big batches of Starlink satellites at an even greater speed, to give one example. Starlink is the program SpaceX is doing to put thousands of sattilites in space that could provide fast and inexpensive wireless internet to the entire World. This megaconstellation of satellites could provide broadband everywhere and get situated a lot faster with a system that allows Superheavys to easily be captured, refueld, and reflying. Also, SpaceX has plans to provide intercontinental commercial flights that would give travelers the ability to fly around the globe in less than an hour with point-to-point landings. To not have to use too many Superheavys or Starships it is important to have a fast turnaround for the rocket. Plus, SpaceX has an agreement with NASA to asisst with sending cargo and crews to the Moon for Project Artemis. That calls for a fast capture and
Thumbnail Credit: Tjin M