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After an explosion of activity and shipments of custom parts, SpaceX appears to be almost ready to begin transforming Starship’s sprawling launch tower into what CEO Elon Musk has described as a “Mechazilla.”
Over the past few weeks, a number of new components have started to take shape quickly, offering a real first glimpse of what SpaceX’s latest innovation (hope) might look like and how it works. Earlier this year, Musk revealed his intention to forgo landing legs entirely on Super Heavy land thrusters – and, potentially, spaceships – entirely by using a giant tower with arms to literally grab rockets in the air.
These unintuitive plans have sparked wild speculation as aerospace fans who follow SpaceX have attempted to imagine what such a solution might look like – often engaging in some sort of back-and-forth wave with Musk him. -even when the CEO sometimes answered representations and renderings.
Months after the reveal, however, parts of this tower’s rocket handling mechanisms began to arrive on an almost constant stream of flatbed trucks and Something is being assembled on a concrete slab previously used as a landing zone for Starship. Two separate structures are under construction at LZ: one a large frame assembled from banana yellow metal tubes and the other a (for now) flatter black structure assembled from prefabricated components reminiscent of crane parts and farms.
Now measuring some 135 m (~ 440 ft) in height, SpaceX’s spacecraft ‘launch tower’ has also been assembled from 9 different segments with what looks like six vertical rails running most of the length. of three of its four rectangular legs. Since they were first spotted months ago, it has long been assumed that these rails would support some sort of elevator-like trolley intended to hook onto the outside of the tower. This cart would then be equipped with at least three (and probably five or more) large arms capable of grabbing, stabilizing and powering the spacecraft.
Over the past week or so, SpaceX has also been working hard to complete the ninth and final section – believed to be the roof – of the launch tower. In recent days this section of four-legged lathe has been fitted with an interesting appendage which itself was then fitted with several massive sheaves (i.e. pulleys). This material will likely be part of a high powered pulley system that will pull the arm carriage up and down the tower, allowing it to grab, lift and grab Starships and Super Heavy thrusters.
Obviously, SpaceX is preparing to install the final pre-fabricated section of the launch tower, likely raising the tower to its final height of around 145 m (~ 475 feet). It is possible that some sort of crane will be permanently installed at the top of the tower, but currently it appears that SpaceX intends to rely exclusively on the arms of the tower to install, stack, stabilize, power and ( maybe) catch Starship and Super Heavy.
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