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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said Starship’s Super Heavy boosters could forgo landings entirely, relying instead on a savage crane-based solution to reclaim the world’s largest rocket stage.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, the Super Heavy thruster tasked with carrying a spacecraft of around 1,400 tonnes (~ 300,000 lbs) about 25% of the trajectory in orbit will be the largest rocket stage ever built – by far.
“Standing about as high as a full two-stage Falcon 9 rocket at 70 meters (230 feet) end-to-end, the Super Heavy thruster tasked with putting the Starship about a quarter of the way into orbit will be the tallest.” rocket stage never built. Equipped with up to 28 Raptors capable of producing over ~ 7,300 metric tons (~ 16.2 million lbf) of lift off thrust, Super Heavy will also be the most powerful rocket ever built, outclassing Saturn V and the Falcon Heavy respectively. of SpaceX by a factor. more than two and three. “
Teslarati.com – December 29, 2020
Prior to today, December 30, SpaceX’s plan was to scavenge the Super Heavy boosters more or less the same as Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, landing them either far downstream on an ocean-based platform. , or by returning to land as close to the launch pad as possible. Since the first iteration of SpaceX’s Mars rocket was publicly revealed in 2016, SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk have also maintained a constant desire to land Super Heavy boosters directly on the launch pad after much refinement.
Retrieving the launch mount would require unprecedented precision and precision and add a new element of risk or a need for extraordinarily robust pad material. However, the benefits would be just as significant, entirely eliminating the need for expensive salvage assets, tedious transportation, and even the time it would take to bring Super Heavy thrusters back to the launch pad from a drop zone. landing adjacent to the platform.
Instead, Musk says SpaceX might be able to literally capture Super heavy in the air, grabbing the booster before it can hit the ground by somehow inserting an elaborate “launch tower arm” under its steel grid fins. While such a solution seems about as complex and risky as it gets, it would technically rule out the need for any booster recovery infrastructure – even including the legs Super Heavy would otherwise need.
Saves mass and cost of legs and allows immediate repositioning of the booster on the launch mount – ready to recharge in under an hour
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 30, 2020
While this is true, grabbing the Super Heavy by its grid fins would likely require the control surfaces and the structures they attach to be significantly overbuilt – especially if Musk means that the crane arm mechanism would be capable of ‘catch anywhere along the 7 m of the deployed fins) length. More importantly, it seems extremely unlikely that such a complex and unproven recovery method could work reliably on the first try (s), implying that early boosters will always need some sort of legs of rudimentary landing.
In other words, just like direct-to-launch landings, recovery from mid-flight crane catches is likely do not a feature expected to debut on Super Heavy v1.0.
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