In 2013, SpaceX announced that they were going
to try landing their Falcon 9 rocket back on Earth. To add to the complexity of this idea, they
were going to try landing on a floating droneship in the middle of the ocean. Something like this had never been done before
and at the time, it seemed like an impossible goal. But if it was successful, it would be a massive
step forward for rocket reusability. So, SpaceX began experimenting with various
test vehicles to learn how to land a rocket. After a couple of years and many explosions,
SpaceX finally made the impossible, possible. 5 years on from that historic first landing,
the iconic sight of a Falcon 9 landing has become routine. With so many launches nowadays, SpaceX have
perfected this incredible feat of engineering and saved themselves a lot of money. Each time a Falcon 9 is reflown, they save
on the cost of building a brand new booster. In just the last five years, this has saved
SpaceX over 1.4 billion dollars. To this day, SpaceX is the only company that
has landed and reused an orbital rocket booster. But now they are focusing their efforts on
Starship, the next evolution of crazy space ideas. Those of us that have followed the Starship
program have been treated to some incredible spectacles. The recent SN8 test flight was one of the
craziest things SpaceX have ever done. But it showed that their ambitious plans for
Starship are more realistic than most of us thought. After all of the crazy things SpaceX have
done over the last five years, it seemed like things couldn’t get any crazier. Until this. On Twitter, Elon casually announced a new
plan to land the Super Heavy booster. But the plan isn’t to “land” Super Heavy
at all. Instead, SpaceX wants to catch it out of the
air as it makes its final approach over the launch mount. AIRPLANE: It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether. AIRPLANE: It's an entirely different kind of flying. Although this sounds like another crazy Elon
idea, SpaceX aren’t the only company to consider catching rockets out of the sky. Rocketlab is planning on catching their Electron
rocket using parachutes and a helicopter. Back in the 60’s, NASA considered catching
the enormous Saturn 5 first stage using a helicopter with rotor blades over 100 meters
long. In comparison, SpaceX’s idea sounds a little
less crazy. But before we look into how and why SpaceX
are going with this ambitious idea, I want to thank Private Internet Access for supporting
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Private Internet Access. So we have established how SpaceX are going
to catch the Super Heavy booster. But in order to know why, we need to understand
the overall goal of Starship. Starship consists of two stages: the booster
stage called ‘Super Heavy’ and the 2nd stage which is just called Starship. Super Heavy lifts the 2nd stage out of the
thickest parts of the atmosphere and Starship does the rest of the work to get into orbit. After separating, Super Heavy comes back down
to land, just like the Falcon 9. For Starship, the aim is to travel to the
Moon and Mars. In order to achieve this, SpaceX will use
a fleet of Starships to refuel in space. On top of this, SpaceX also wants to use Starship
for Earth to Earth passenger travel. This means Starship will need to perform multiple
flights a day with a turnaround time on par with airliners. The original plan for Super Heavy was to land
directly onto the launch mount, making it instantly ready for its next flight. Although this would have many benefits, it
would require a level of precision much greater than SpaceX have shown with their Falcon 9
landings. So, SpaceX moved to the idea of landing Super
Heavy on a landing pad and using a giant crane to lift it onto the launch mount. This would require at least six extremely
large landing legs with enough shock absorption to handle the landing. But this is where the problems come in. For the Falcon 9 landings, the booster needs
to be transported back to a refurbishment hangar where many components are replaced
and inspected. One of the most critical parts in their refurbishment
process is the landing legs. All of this takes an enormous amount of time
which isn’t an option for Super Heavy. Removing the legs from the design completely,
would not only simplify the turnaround time, but it would also save an incredible amount
of weight. Every kilogram of mass saved, will allow the
rocket to carry heavier payloads into orbit. With 6 legs on the Super Heavy, the overall
mass of the landing gear would be around 10% of the entire booster upon landing. But without any legs, SpaceX’s only option
is to catch the booster. This will still require a great amount of
precision since it since the booster will need to hit its marks almost perfectly. One of the big advantages Super Heavy has
over the Falcon 9 is its ability to hover. Even with just one engine firing, the Falcon
9 is too powerful to hover so it has to perform a suicide burn. This involves firing its engine at just the
right time, bringing the vertical velocity to zero the moment it touches the ground. Since Super Heavy has more engines than the
Falcon 9, it can reduce its thrust-to-weight ratio to 1. This will allow it to hover over the pad and
give it extra time to adjust its course. SpaceX will try to catch the booster on its
final approach using a giant arm attached to the launch tower. As Super Heavy comes into land, it will thread
the needle between these catching arms until they retract inwards and lock into place. One of the key points about this idea is that
the catcher will hook onto the grid fins which will need to take the load of the entire booster. At first, this seems like an incredible amount
of force to exert on the grid fins. But since they are designed to handle a large
amount of drag upon reentry, they are already extremely strong in this direction. Despite this unique method of landing, it
will still require shock absorption to handle the last bit of energy and bring the booster
to a standstill. Normally this shock absorption would be handled
by the landing legs. On the Falcon 9, the landing legs consist of telescopic tubes that are filled with compressed helium. As the legs fold in on themselves, the compressed
gas acts as a shock absorber. The main thing here is that the shock absorption
will be built into the catcher and not the rocket. This will reduce the amount of stress on the
rocket, taking away any need for major refurbishment. SpaceX will likely use a similar system of
air suspension but on a much larger scale. Another theory is that they could use a cable
catching system, similar to the ones used on aircraft carriers. This system involves multiple steel ropes
laid out on the runway which are designed to be caught by the tailhook of an aircraft. As the hook connects with the wires, the energy
is absorbed by hydraulic damping systems below the deck, quickly bringing it to a halt. Taking all of this away from the rocket and
transferring it onto the landing arm will allow Super Heavy to be as light as possible,
without putting too much stress on the rocket. But weight saving is only part of the puzzle. The real benefit here is the ability to rapidly
relaunch the booster. If it can be immediately lowered onto the
launch mount after a landing, the booster can be secured, detanked and inspected for
its next flight. After all, the detanking process is especially
important for Starship since it will still contain excess methane after it lands. Methane isn’t allowed to be vented into
the atmosphere so SpaceX plans to pump the leftovers back into the tank farm for it to
be recondensed and used for the next flight. So although we might have to wait a few more
years for SpaceX to attempt this crazy idea, it’s inspiring to see them taking on these
incredible engineering challenges. When SpaceX landed their first booster 5 years
ago, it made us rethink what is possible and advanced the world of spaceflight massively. No matter what happens, it’s clear that
we are witnessing history being made. If you’d like to support Primal Space, consider
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