Elon Musk plans to take the most powerful SpaceX rocket, not land it

One day, in the not too distant future, Elon Musk imagines taking off from Earth and sending his next generation starship on its way to the moon, Mars or just the other side of the world. Several minutes later, the first stage booster used for takeoff returns to the launch tower, where it is “picked up” by a specially designed arm and prepared for another launch in an hour.

The SpaceX boss hinted at this plan in a series of tweets on Wednesday.

“We will try to take the Super Heavy Booster with the arm of the launch tower, using the fins on the grid to carry the load,” he wrote in response to another Twitter user.

Super Heavy is the next generation propeller designed to pair with the SpaceX Starship now under development at the company’s Texas facility. You may have seen the first successful high-altitude test flight of a starship prototype earlier this month, which ended with a loud crash landing.

Musk’s view is that the starship will eventually carry up to 100 passengers into the solar system and on super-fast transcontinental flights through space.

The current SpaceX workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9 used to launch satellites and missions to the International Space Station, returns to Earth and lands using retractable landing legs. For the Super Heavy, which will rival the largest and most powerful rockets ever built, Musk sees advantages in eliminating those legs.

“Saves mass and cost of legs and allows immediate repositioning of the booster in the launch assembly – ready to refine in less than an hour,” he tweeted.

The movement redirects the landing tension to the grid fins, which are located near the top of the booster and are essentially used to direct the rocket during flight, and for some type of device on the launch tower that the grid fins will reach. take a rest.

Musk said using his legs to land the Super Heavy is also an option.

“The legs would certainly work, but the best part is not part, the best step is not any step,” he wrote.

When we will see all of this in action is not clear. SpaceX is working on Super Heavy in Texas, but expect several other test flights of solo star ship prototypes without the big booster before we see any of these possible innovations in real life.