Musk fumbles the timetable for first Starship catch

CEO Elon Musk says SpaceX probably won't attempt to catch a returning Starship for several months, walking back his earlier suggestion that it could happen on the next test flight. In a post on his social media platform, X, Musk said: "We will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months." He added that if a tower had …

[IGotOut]

Breaking News!

Musk Lies!

Seriously, I'd been more inclined to believe the drunken gibbering idiot in a Spoons than this guy (then again she is my best mate)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Breaking News!

Wow. Literally 9 weeks after the IPO, and 2 weeks after “SpaceX employees and early investors were allowed to start selling their shares on August 6, 2026, two trading days after the company reported its first quarterly financial results as a public entity.”.

Who’d a thunk that of Space Karen.

[iron]

How can you tell Musk is lying? His lips move.

[trindflo]

Re: How can you tell Musk is lying?

Also his eyes focus on something. Not necessarily anything we can see, but something.

[You aint sin me, roit]

Re: How can you tell Musk is lying?

He gives the impression of focusing somewhere in the distance, but really that just a ketamine defocus.

[TheMaskedMan]

No doubt SpaceX could make a good attempt at catching Ship, and it might even work - I suspect it probably would.

But what if it doesn't? Right now, SpaceX have one functional pad capable of launching Starship. If something goes wrong during a catch attempt, there's a fair chance that pad would be reduced to toasted scrap. Nobody has ever tried something like this, and the potential for unexpected problems - and a toasty pad - is high.

If the pad is damaged or destroyed, SpaceX will have to wait for it to be rebuilt, or one of the other pads to be e completed before they can resume operations. Whereas, if they wait for pad 1 and / or 39A to come online, they have redundancy and a failed catch won't grind the whole program to a halt. Surely, it's more sensible to continue as they are, launching, testing, deploying starlink etc until such time as they can afford to lose a pad. Can't really blame them for that.

[AndrueC]

No doubt SpaceX could make a good attempt at catching Ship, and it might even work - I suspect it probably would.

Surprise me, Holy Void!

..I wonder who will get that reference :)

[Excused Boots]

"But what if it doesn't? Right now, SpaceX have one functional pad capable of launching Starship. If something goes wrong during a catch attempt, there's a fair chance that pad would be reduced to toasted scrap. Nobody has ever tried something like this, and the potential for unexpected problems - and a toasty pad - is high.”

I’m not too sure about that, on landing there is very, very little fuel left. Yes we’ve all seen the previous ship ‘landings’ which ended in a fireball, but although spectacular looking, and yes took the empty upper stage apart, was probably not too energetic, I’m not sure it would have seriously damaged a hardened launch pad.

Now SpaceX has already, albeit once, managed to retrieve a first stage super-heavy booster, so it is doable. Yes doing the same for an upper stage descending from orbital velocity is somewhat more challenging, but the principle is the same.

[Mishak]

And they do bring it down on a path that means it will impact well away from the pad if it's not fully under control (it is actively redirected at the last moment to the tower).

However, it will still have enough kinetic and chemical energy to do significant damage if something goes wrong at the last moment.

It really needs a deep pit next to the tower to drop it in if there problems at the very last moment ;-)

[John Robson]

That's called the Gulf of Mexico.

Ok, there are still a handful of seconds where that's not a viable target, but there always will be.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's called the Gulf of Mexico.

Not any more. America's most famous convicted felon/sex offender/serial bankrupt/grifter renamed it the Gulf of America. Didn't you get the memo? His stormtrooper ICE goons are on their way to pick you up.

[Jellied Eel]

However, it will still have enough kinetic and chemical energy to do significant damage if something goes wrong at the last moment.

It really needs a deep pit next to the tower to drop it in if there problems at the very last moment ;-)

Yep. This is why I'm increasingly dubious about a human-rated Starship. Final approach seems very final, if there's an anomaly, the ship isn't caught and does the UED thing. Trying to catch a falling Starship coming in arse-first that will topple and explode, if you don't stick the landing just seems very high risk. Or adding a crew escape system that can carry maybe 10+ passengers would also be a challenge. But also-

This was not anticipated, and the vehicle ended up having to be towed into port – something Starship wasn't designed for.

Perhaps it should be? That landing seemed pretty gentle, and something you could probably walk (or swim) away from. But would also need an abort-to-water system that could detect it's probably not going to survive a touchdown and divert... Which would seem challenging given the probability of an oopsie increases as Starship is getting <250m from the pad. But being coastal and having some fuel left, maybe a missed approach procedure for a splashdown could be implemented.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Well the Falcon 9 currently in use do use a dog leg approach to landing (whether on a pad or drone ship) in that until the final engine burn starts, the booster will always miss the pad/drone ship and come down 'safe' (well big ball of fire and parts flying around sort of safe)

And ... much to everyones surprise, caught a starship booster twice. but its interesting from a 'space' point of view and whats possible/not possible when it comes to flying big metal tubes around. and I'm glad in a way that at least we're flyign such stuff instead of NASA's launch 1 rocket every couple of years program.. then abandon what we've done and rebuild from scratch.

Juts wish there was a way to leave Shotwell in charge and ease the muskrat out to the safe holding pen/care home

[MachDiamond]

"and I'm glad in a way that at least we're flyign such stuff instead of NASA's launch 1 rocket every couple of years program."

NASA isn't in the business of launching rockets. They do science and there is a lot that goes into that besides rockets. The hardware gets built from scratch as there isn't a "standard" mission and something such as going to the moon has a load of unique requirements. It would make no sense to just build some more Saturn V's as engineering has moved on in the last bunch of decades. Shuttle is a good poster child for something built by committee that could do too many things, but none of them well. If you want to set a land speed record, you don't shop what's on the Ford dealer's lot.

[MachDiamond]

"That landing seemed pretty gentle, and something you could probably walk (or swim) away from. "

That ONE seemed fairly gentle from the outside, but it is a big giant tube falling over. The other tries haven't looked that gentle as the fireball and big flamey boom happens.

[Geoff Campbell]

Landing perils

Indeed, but the same is true of trying to land something like a 747. If you watch the various pilot-led YouTube channels on aviation, and particularly aviation crashes, it quickly becomes clear that landing a several-hundred-ton metal tube with a decent quantity of flammable liquid in the wings has so many moving parts, and such a badly-designed UX, that it's a miracle that it ever goes right. And yet, millions of people use it as a bus with wings every year, quite safely and without even a first thought, let alone a second one.

(I recommend the Mentour Pilot channel as one that hits the right balance of knowledge and quiet introspection rather than glorifying big fireballs and lots of corpses, as might be tempting. I've learned a lot about flight mechanics and failure modes from those videos.)

Will Starship or something similar, ever get rated for passenger use? No idea, above my pay grade.

But, yeah, we've smoothed out the rough edges of such things in the past and made them commonplace. Who knows?

GJC

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: Landing perils

(And, let's face it, people willingly climb into helicopters for convenience and the avoidance of a little bit of traffic, and those suckers are an absolute offence against the laws of physics and engineering. As one fixed-wing pilot is reputed to have observed: "Helicopters don't fly. They are so ugly the Earth repels them.")

GJC

[MachDiamond]

"However, it will still have enough kinetic and chemical energy to do significant damage if something goes wrong at the last moment."

So Brownsville or South Padre Island?

[MachDiamond]

"I’m not sure it would have seriously damaged a hardened launch pad."

How about a not so hardened fuel farm located immediately adjacent to that launch tower?

[Dan 55]

I guess the US could always ask China, they appear to have solved the catching the reusable rocket problem.

[MachDiamond]

"I guess the US could always ask China, they appear to have solved the catching the reusable rocket problem."

They've recovered a booster two ways now. The question is whether that leads to anything useful. It costs a lot of money to have a reusable rocket so the savings via that reuse needs to exceed the added costs. It hasn't been a technological issue since the 1960's. It's been a matter of whether it made financial sense.

[Dan 55]

I don't remember reusable rockets in the 1960s and there was only partially reusable space shuttles from the 1980s.

Nobody's debating if it will lead to anything useful in the US, let's not shift the goalposts just for China.

[MachDiamond]

"I don't remember reusable rockets in the 1960s"

The Surveyor missions that proceeded Apollo landed under power on the moon were done in the 1960's. There was DCX, Unreasonable Rocket, Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems more recently.

It takes the launch cadence of a mega constellation for reuse to pencil out. There has to be a likelihood of doing a bunch of launches quickly so the rocket doesn't become obsolete before its hit a solid break-even point (10+ flights).

Shuttle was refurbishable more than reusable. It turned out to take a lot more going over after every mission than what was initially thought. The booster on the Falcon tops out lower than previous rockets so it can come back without needing to turn too much energy into heat. It still does heat up quite a bit, but nowhere near the temps that happen with something going at an orbital velocity. The Falcon second stage is discarded. I expect that if Elon wasn't trying to get Starship back, they'd have an operational system already. The heat shield shows the cost of sub-orbital speeds. Tack on more speed (energy) and the cost rises faster than linear. A non-reusable Starship (the second stage) would delete the tiles, the header tank, extra fuel, the wings and other things needed to get it back. Every gram costs.

[TaabuTheCat]

It's time

Why does anyone believe a single word this man says? And why the constant coverage of his lies? Wake up journalists! It's well past time to put this asshole on ignore.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's time

Who are we talking about here?

The Muskenator or the Orange Felon?

[UCAP]

Re: It's time

That's an easy one - both

[R Soul]

And why the constant coverage of his lies?

Like the rest of the planet's arse-wipes - Trump, Farage, Johnston, etc - His Muskiness is an inexhaustible source of cut & paste copy that can be turned into clickbait with minimal effort. There's no need for any of that pesky fact checking: just put "$fuckwit said" followed by whatever is their most recent lie-of-the-day.

[MachDiamond]

Re: And why the constant coverage of his lies?

"His Muskiness is an inexhaustible source of cut & paste copy that can be turned into clickbait with minimal effort."

I expect he comes up with a lot of it on his own, but may have a staff to feed him things as well. Between all of the companies he walks, being an expert in so many video games, parenting loads of children and doing interviews, where would he find time to read?

[frankyunderwood123]

Mr Ketamine ...

... isn't someone you'd call for factual information.

Lest we forget, this is the super intelligent being that decided nazi salutes were cool when he was trying to out-trump trump.

That short lived period when he figured he was more powerful than the deranged POTUS and could maybe control him - that went well, NOT.

This is the retard that filmed himself carrying a kitchen sink into twitter HQ.

That's a level of deluded stupid that's off the charts.

We're dealing with someone who is on the spectrum in such a profound way, it's damn scary.

This individual has ZERO grasp of reality and probably never has.

Big time daddy issues.

Missing a humanity bone in the fact he appears to be entirely lacking empathy.

Poor sod.

And...

And ...

Yet he's sending rockets into space.

He's the richest man EVER and has plans to send humans to Mars ... eventually.

Is it just the deep pockets that enable him to buy into this shit, or is he actually genius level - mad genius level?

Which is it?

My bet is it's the deep pockets.

The guy sure don't look like a genius nor act like one - the man has a broke brain.

But if you are a general thicko like me, how you gonna recognize some genius dude? Right?

Surely someone given a chainsaw on stage by Argentina's President and then wielding it on that stage is a super intelligent individual, right?

Totally grasping all manner of political complexity across the globe?

Understanding that moment?

Or is that person just a chump - the world's richest chump - using his money to screw the world up rather than fix it?

I suspect that's about right.

Musk is a chump.

[trindflo]

Re: Mr Ketamine ...

It is surprising to me how people like that get funded. So we have someone known for engineering firms, and the money folks decide they should give him billions to take over twitter, a social media platform which he has zero track record with. Whatever is going on, it isn't business as most of us understand it.

[Herring`]

Re: Mr Ketamine ...

I can never tell if investors are morons or if they believe that they can sell their stock to other investors who are morons. I suppose this is the "greater fool" theory.

What Musk has managed to do though by getting into the Nasdaq 100 early is force tracker funds - ordinary folks retirement savings - to buy into his crap. A massive transfer of wealth from regular people to wealthy private investors.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"someone who is on the spectrum in such a profound way, it's damn scary."

His presence on that spectrum probably gives octarine its greenish tinge.

I reckon chucking the Special K and starting a course of the Bursar's dried frog pills might be advisable.

[MachDiamond]

Re: "someone who is on the spectrum in such a profound way, it's damn scary."

"I reckon chucking the Special K and starting a course of the Bursar's dried frog pills might be advisable."

I need to make more of those for Hogswatch this year. I found a bigger jar for them at an estate sale.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: "someone who is on the spectrum in such a profound way, it's damn scary."

If he is indeed "on the spectrum," which is a rather inelegant way of describing autism, and, as far as I am aware, only a rumour, then it's a good example of what the autism spectrum actually is; a collection of diagnostic traits, of which an individual with autism possesses a diagnostic number. In other words, all autistic people are different, and have struggles, strengths, and personalities, thank fuck. Elmo is an example of how those traits (if indeed they are actually there) can land on top of an underlying personality that is already a piece of shit.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Mr Ketamine ...

"He's the richest man EVER and has plans to send humans to Mars ... eventually."

I think that depends on how you tot up what he has. His gross worth is tied up in stocks he nominally owns, but there are lots of questions about his net worth. He does control a lot of money if you equate market cap with real money. Tesla is down to one car in two sizes. Now they are selling their Semi, but BYD has been selling electric trucks in the US for ages now. Most other truck makers have been selling them for ages on the other side of the Atlantic. Trumps might kill off Tesla's chances with the next round of tariffs and corresponding retaliation.

[S4qFBxkFFg]

Re: Mr Ketamine ...

It's not as complex as that.

He's not a genius. He's socially inept (for example, the sink meme stuff is cargo-cult emulation of what seems cool in popular culture, like an outsider high-schooler doing "crazy" stuff without understanding why, because the cool kids do it and it works for them; been there, done that), intelligent, with an impressive (if intermittent) capacity to focus, an eye for the long term, and (probably excessive) ability to accept risk. Combined with a (debated) rich background, the paypal windfall, and bloody-mindedness, he's managed to do what Boeing, LockMart, NG, etc., simply (whether for organisational or technical shortcomings) could not. He's certainly not Tony Stark, but those who say it's all because of Shotwell, his engineers, etc., need to ask WHY similarly competent engineers at the much bigger aerospace companies could not do what his did.

[Anonymous Coward]

No surprise now the earnings calls have been had..

Is it me, or do promises of new shiny things and amazing developments only seem to appear around earnings call time?

Nah, it's just me :).

[Anonymous Coward]

If a tower had been waiting at sea

> where Starship splashed down last month, "it would have been caught."

And if a funfair had been waiting at sea "it would have been on the dodgems".

Chopsticks on a choppy sea, what could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they tried lubing the ships so they can get into space easier? That way they could have the fuel to guide them to land on a planet that's 71% water.

Maybe I'm talking as much bollocks as Elon.

It bugs me because I should be a billionaire by now based on my ability to talk bollocks.

[Jimjam3]

He’s a gambling man that’s won a few big bets by using others to bend the odds. However he won’t win forever.

His verbal output is hot air and should be ignored as should the man himself.

[PhilipN]

Check the calendar

Yup - market manipulation Friday.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Yeah, well, when your entire valuation is based on gambling and speculation by raging fan-bois without functioning brain cells to recognize Musk for the scam artist he is, your valuations are going to suffer eventually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any day now…

Send more money.

Any day now…

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Send more money.

Is it like the Nigerian 419 scams which ask for a small amount of money now, with the prospect of a much larger return later?

"I am an exiled South African Prince..."

[trevorde]

Stop! Wait! I want my ...

Full Self Driving

RoboTaxi

Tesla Roadster

Optimus humanoid robot

et al

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Stop! Wait! I want my ...

I raise you, Hyperloop, Solar Roofs, Tesla Semi and a Mars Colony!

[MachDiamond]

Re: Stop! Wait! I want my ...

"Full Self Driving

RoboTaxi

Tesla Roadster

Optimus humanoid robot"

You can have mine. I don't want any of that.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Reaching orbit consistently is also critical to SpaceX's work for NASA.

You would sort of imagine that might be the case. /s

_{No shit Sherlock. The S in NASA isn't, not as such actually, submarine.}

[Zack Mollusc]

Drat!

I was looking forward to a catch attempt of starship as it is win-win for either a spectacular display of control or a spectacular explosion.

I wonder how many orbits (presuming the circularisation burn works) they will go for and if they have any starlink sats which are capable to manoeuvre into a useful orbit and join the constellation.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Drat!

"and if they have any starlink sats which are capable to manoeuvre into a useful orbit and join the constellation."

Only if the track is along the only one Starship can take out of the tip of Texas.

[Sproggit]

There's Iterating, and then there's Iterating...

I know it's a long, long time ago now, but way back when, SpaceX had multiple successful landings for "SpaceHopper" while they were still designing "Starship".

What seems to have happened is that SpaceX have set themselves a "critical path" in which SuperHeavy is either caught by Chopsticks... or goes for a swim... and Starship gets the swim every time.

But... a huge part of what they need to do here is evaluate each test vehicle to see how they cope.

My unscientific understanding was that the reason for the introduction of Chopsticks on the tower was to facilitate rapid vehicle re-use, rather than just "re-use" of the variety they have already mastered with F9 and F-Heavy.

It's almost certainly too late to make wholesale changes to their test plan at this stage, but I'm very curious to know why Starship hasn't been fitted with the same sort of deployable landing legs that we saw with SpaceHopper... just because that seems a reasonably attainable goal right now, especially if Starship does a complete orbit and then flies a de-orbit burn to bring it down at the desired location...

And as for SuperHeavy... I would have thought that it would make sense to have a ".5" design with the same sort of deployable legs that F9 has. No, this won't be the final design, but I think we're at a point in testing where that part of the vehicle could comfortably survive a pad landing - and give the engineers something much more tangible to investigate. Apart from anything else, it would also allow SpaceX to refly some or all of the first stage Raptor engines - again, giving them invaluable data on reliability and useful service life.

Obviously none of the above were considered viable, or SpaceX would be doing these things now.

What would interest me is understanding why I'm wrong with the above suggestions... Did they consider the interim stages too expensive for the anticipated returns? Did they decide they wanted the motivation to "JFDI"? Something else?

Of all the twists and turns of the journey SpaceX are on, these are the decisions that make the least sense from the outside - and are likely the most interesting from the inside.

[that one in the corner]

Re: There's Iterating, and then there's Iterating...

> I'm very curious to know why Starship hasn't been fitted with the same sort of deployable landing legs that we saw with SpaceHopper..

Don't be daft, there is nothing planned for Starship that would ever need landing legs, so why would SpaceX bother trying to fit and test those?

Now, about the Chopsticks On The Moon for Artemis... after which we'll see the complete design for the Bouncy Castle On Mars landing arrestor.

[Sproggit]

Re: There's Iterating, and then there's Iterating...

"Don't be daft, there is nothing planned for Starship that would ever need landing legs, so why would SpaceX bother trying to fit and test those?"

In that case - genuine question, not sarcasm - then how do SpaceX plan to land Starship on Mars?

[MachDiamond]

Re: There's Iterating, and then there's Iterating...

"My unscientific understanding was that the reason for the introduction of Chopsticks on the tower was to facilitate rapid vehicle re-use, rather than just "re-use" of the variety they have already mastered with F9 and F-Heavy."

Starship/superheavy is huge. If you think an elephant is big.......

Not only is it big, they have to burn it's engines like mad so they can stop sooner to be able to get back to the landing pad and that means needing every drop of the propellants they can get. Legs would be correspondingly massive which means lots of added mass. If one is trying for a pinpoint landing, might as well tighten the CEP and "land" on pins higher up on the rocket that don's mass nearly as much (more budget for propellant).

Back when I was working on this sort of thing for another company, we talked about taking off and landing in a cradle to save the weight of landing legs. It was put on the back burner with one of the biggest issues being safety/insurance. If for some reason the lander was being twitchy, we could have it set down on the test range anywhere. With the cradle, anywhere other than the cradle was a crash with all of the paperwork and madness that would go along with that. It would also only work on Earth at a prepared site.

[You aint sin me, roit]

Re: There's Iterating, and then there's Iterating...

Probably got the idea from watching Thunderbirds.

Thunderbird 3 landed vertically on its launch pad, though was designed not to need chopsticks. It could then be refuelled and launched directly from where it landed. Neat.

[Excused Boots]

Re: There's Iterating, and then there's Iterating...

"My unscientific understanding was that the reason for the introduction of Chopsticks on the tower was to facilitate rapid vehicle re-use, rather than just "re-use" of the variety they have already mastered with F9 and F-Heavy.”

I believe you are correct, the idea being to treat the booster and starship as equivalent to an airliner. It lands, the passengers, cargo, whatever, get off, it gets a once over just to check that nothing has actually fallen off, the two parts are put back together, fuelled up and off again from the same pad it landed on. So yes the ultimate plan is to have rapid reuse, say with, a couple of hours. Whether or not that is remotely practical is another matter, but I suppose if you don’t try, then you get nowhere.

I believe that the fastest turnaround time for a F9 booster was some nine days. Also the superheavy booster is quite a bit bigger and heavier than F9 so any landing legs would need to be far more robust, and heavier, not a desirable thing for a booster as that means less payload. So if you ‘can’ get the grid fins to do double service then fine.

[MachDiamond]

Artemis III

While NASA isn't concerned about Starship being caught, SpaceX needs the reuseablity so they don't need a couple of dozen Starships to make their wildly complicated side of the mission work. I expect that Elon is less worried about that, since they have been paid already, as much as needing to save a few bob here and there to spam v3 Starlink satellites as fast as possible. While there's loads of talk about all of the things Starship could do, the only thing being worked on lends itself to pushing out flat-pack sats and not more traditional payloads. The three-letter agencies with big heavy spy satellites need a way to deploy them as a large lump. Something that Starship plans aren't showing.