One day in the not too distant future Elon Musk envisions blasting off Earth and sending his next-generation spaceship on its way to the moon, Mars or just the other side of the world. A few minutes later, the first stage booster, which is used for take-off, returns to the launch tower, where it is "caught" by a specially designed arm and prepared for another launch in just an hour.
The SpaceX boss hinted at this plan in a series of tweets on Wednesday.
We're going to try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the arm of the launch tower using the grid fins to take the load
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 30, 2020
"We'll try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the launch tower arm and take the load using the grid ribs," he wrote in response to another Twitter user.
Super Heavy is the next generation booster designed to be paired with the SpaceX Starship currently under development at the company's Texas facility. You may have seen that first successful soaring of an early Starship prototype Earlier this month that ended with a big bang of a hard landing.
Musk's vision is that Starship will eventually carry up to 100 passengers into the solar system and on super-fast transcontinental flights over space.
The current SpaceX workhorse rocket Falcon 9, which launched satellites and missions to the International Space Station, returns to Earth with retractable landing legs and lands. For Super Heavy, who can rival the largest and most powerful missiles ever built, Musk sees benefits in eliminating those legs.
"Saves bulk and costs on the legs and allows the booster to be repositioned immediately on the mount's start - ready to re-fire in less than an hour." he tweeted.
The movement directs the load of a landing to the grid fins, which are located near the top of the booster and are essentially used to guide the missile during flight, and to some sort of apparatus on the launch tower that the grid fins come to rest on .
Musk said using legs to land Super Heavy is still an option.
"Legs would certainly work, but the best part is not a part, the best step is not a step," he wrote.
When we will see all of this in action is not clear. SpaceX is working on Super Heavy However, expect several more test flights of Solo Starship prototypes without the big booster before we see any of these possible innovations in real life.
