Anyone with even a passing interest in rockets has probably marveled many times over SpaceX’s vertical landing of its Falcon 9 rocket first stage minutes after launching a payload into orbit. The American spaceflight company first performed the feat in 2015 and has done it more than 600 times since, allowing it to reuse the same boosters over and over again. SpaceX engineers have applied what they learned from autonomous booster landings to their next-generation and much larger Starship rocket, but the process involves some important differences. Instead of following the Falcon 9 plan and using landing legs for a land landing or unmanned craft parked in the ocean, SpaceX has adopted a new design that uses giant mechanical arms on the Starship’s launch tower to catch the returning first-stage booster, called Super Heavy, before it hits the ground. While you might wonder why it didn’t simply emulate the Falcon 9’s proven leg-based landing, SpaceX has good reason to take a different approach. For starters, building the Starship without landing legs reduces the overall weight of the vehicle, allowing for larger crews, heavier cargo, or more fuel. For a rocket like Starship, which is designed to lift more than 100 tons of payload, even small savings in mass can pave the way for higher payload and improve launch efficiency. It also wants to make the Starship a rapidly reusable rocket that can be trapped in the launch tower before being inspected and prepared for another flight without having to be transported to a separate facility, as is the case with the Falcon 9. SpaceX said the ultimate goal is to enable airline-like operations with multiple launches of the same first-stage booster per day. And there are very good reasons for this ambitious plan. SpaceX’s Bold Plans for Starship For more than two decades, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has often spoken of his desire to build a sustainable city on Mars as a way to protect life in case something catastrophic were to happen on Earth. When the first Starship rocket launched in April 2023, Musk’s dream of sending humans to the red planet got closer and closer, even though the flight lasted only a few minutes. This is because it is the Starship that Musk wants to use to send people, construction materials and other cargo to Mars. Launch windows to the Red Planet open approximately every 26 months, and each lasts several weeks. During those opportunities, SpaceX wants to launch multiple Starship rockets, including the first-stage Super Heavy and the Ship upper stage, loaded with cargo and crew for Mars. The process would involve launching a superheavy and a ship, followed by additional tankers that would refuel the Mars-bound vehicle in orbit. Once fueled, the ship could begin its journey to the red planet, and the Super Heavy would return to the launch tower to refuel before another launch. The process could be repeated several times in a matter of days using multiple Super Heavy boosters and launch towers, sending enormous amounts of material and, eventually, people, to Mars. Musk has also talked about using Starship for super-fast suborbital passenger and cargo flights between major cities, reducing most long-haul trips to less than an hour. This means international routes such as New York to Paris could be completed in about 30 minutes instead of the current seven or eight hours. Again, the Starship would launch as it does now, before gliding in a high suborbital arc before arriving at an upright destination and becoming trapped in a specially constructed tower. The wait may be long. The challenges in making any of Musk’s plans a reality are enormous. Numerous deadlines set by the head of SpaceX for the first human flight to Mars have passed. The Starship also remains in testing, with many milestones yet to be achieved, including the landing of the upper stage craft on another celestial body, as well as its return to Earth after an orbital flight. Beyond developing a vehicle capable of making travel to and from Mars reliable, long-duration life support systems also need to be built, tested and certified. Meanwhile, NASA is developing technologies that it says could enable human missions to Mars sometime in the 2030s. But even if it achieves that goal, a sustainable colony there still appears many decades away. Keeping this in mind, Musk has now proposed establishing a colony on the moon first. As for suborbital passenger and cargo flights around the Earth, the idea is technically possible, but it still needs a lot of development. Again, the Starship is still being tested and has many hurdles to overcome before it becomes operational. The safety of Starship flights over populated areas needs to be ensured and the impact of sonic booms and numerous rocket flights must also be taken into account. The system would also have to be economically viable, with expensive launch, landing and maintenance infrastructure needed at each Starship destination. SpaceX has demonstrated that it can fly and land the Starship, but these achievements seem like small steps compared to the remaining work needed to achieve its loftiest goals. Still, the spaceflight company has come a long way since it arrived on the scene in 2002, so with continued effort, who knows what it will accomplish in the coming years.
