How SpaceX Caught a Rocket Booster With Its Launch Tower

Business Onion · Part 3 - The Catch · 2:57

On October 13, 2024, a 71-meter Super Heavy booster flew back to its launch pad in Texas and the launch tower caught it with two steel arms. Part 3 of BUILDING STARSHIP: the idea of catching a rocket instead of landing it on legs, the engine problem that came first, a first launch that dug a crater under its own launch stand, and the four flights that led to the catch. Numbers & sources: the tower catch was proposed publicly by Elon Musk on December 30, 2020 ("saves mass & cost of legs"). The "genuine risk of bankruptcy" line is from his November 26, 2021 email to staff and was conditional on Starship's flight rate; four days later he publicly called bankruptcy "still unlikely". Raptor 2 "about half" the cost of Raptor 1 is Musk's own statement (February 10, 2022). On April 20, 2023 SpaceX's stated bar was clearing the pad; the rocket was destroyed by its flight termination system about four minutes in, and Musk wrote the next day that SpaceX "wrongly thought" the concrete under the launch stand would survive one launch. Flights 2–5 were all suborbital by design: "reached space" is not "reached orbit". The catch came about seven minutes after liftoff on Flight 5. The "one second" from an abort comes from audio of SpaceX engineers briefing Musk, heard on October 25, 2024. Sources: SpaceX webcasts for Flights 1–5; Elon Musk and SpaceX statements; FAA mishap-investigation releases; TechCrunch (October 25, 2024 audio). Some scenes are cinematic reconstructions of documented events. All quotes, dates, and figures are verified.