Apparently the engines damage themselves in the last few meters when the energy required to hover / land that gets blasted out is reflected back at the rocket by the launchpad itself.
Yes! Every kg used for legs is a kg not used for cargo... (And worse because the legs have to be carried up and down while the cargo only has to go up.)
>Surely the same energy reflection happens on launch.
Don't the launchpads have systems in place to prevent that? Eg the sound suppression system where they basically spray water into the air to absorb the sound. Does the landing pad have that?
Now that I think about it, why land upright at all? You could do a gentle controlled touchdown in a water pool and slowly tilt to horizontal with a minor splash, like the previous Starship.
I do believe it's mostly the legs, but to the first point, on launch you don't have the vacuum engine bells exposed to this. Or second stage at all, where weight matters much more, so any extra shielding you don't need is good.
If they are as precise as they are now, can't they land on asian latrine type launchpads? Like the ones the shuttle used to take off from, with the guides for the blast to go through.
That was the original concept for the booster. You need some sort of giant rocket manipulator at the launch pad no matter what. If you can make it double as an active landing target, you go from needing cm level to m level landing precision.
That's something that's been irking me whenever I watch the booster and now the ship, come crashing down at triple digit MPH speeds then watching it re-light the engines at the now front (aft end of the vehicle but going head first), what with a bunch of non-aerodynamic surfaces there. I am obviously not qualified to assess this, but I wouldn't bet on those engines being reusable more than 2, max 3 times each.
Then again, I wouldn't know how to solve this better -- if you say, have a cover protecting the engines before re-lighting, you're not shedding speed any better than without it, and after re-entry and when the speeds are relatively modest (only, say, 400mph 2-3km up vs 4000mph at 100+km) the air itself doesn't do anything to the engines anyway.
The booster has flaps that help it shed speed, but the Starship's flaps are very different, aren't they? And it's not exactly the kind of a flying brick that Space Shuttle was, either -- having it coast longer before it flips to be caught by Mechazilla, isn't a solution then...
What they do with Falcon 9 is insane as well - they have a portable heatshield for re-entry. That is, the heat shield is the exhaust of the engines. Which is absolutely glorious, not only do you brake, but you shield the rest of the ship using the exhaust as well, as a blowtorch burning to the atmosphere.
Taking an engine off and putting a replacement on is a fast process. Iirc booster gets all its engines in a day or two. Not quite like changing a lightbulb but I think it’s a fast process.
I don't think catching (vs. landing) is a "new space era" game changer, but it offers several advantages in a game (chemical rocketry) where some margins are very thin -
- No need for a separate landing pad. Which might need its own flame trench, for reasons others have noted.
- You already have the chopsticks for pre-launch stacking.
- Because you're stacking with chopsticks, you already have those hard points on the Starship. (Hard points are spots engineered to bear heavy loads, in contrast to fragile areas. On large aerospace structures, hard points are expensive in engineering, manufacturing, and weight.)
- Landing legs on a hard surface require larger safety margins. Or a lot of springs, shock absorbers, and such. (Falcon 9's landing legs include those.) That's because the transient loads during an off-by-5-cm landing can be 3X or more the static loads on your landing legs. Vs. if you land on the chopsticks - all the springs and stuff can be built into them. With chemical rocketry's thin margins, not needing to carry that extra weight to space and back is a serious win.
If you mean why is catching (starship) better than landing (falcon)? The difference is the whole launch platform is reusable, booster and upper stage. Falcon is a reusable booster, the upper stages are always expended. Starship's payload capacity is huge, having that capacity on a fully reusable platform will drastically reduce $/kg to orbit since you aren't building whole new rockets every launch. See Falcon 9 for what a reusable booster can do for cost.
If you mean why catching is (anything) better than landing (anything)? Landing gear is heavy. All the weight and mechatronics and complexity of the landing gear systems takes mass that could've been payload. Put the "landing gear" on the tower instead and the launch vehicle doesn't eat the cost of the weight. It's an optimization but not an order of magnitude revolution compared to a fully reusable heavy lift platform.
The question for Falcon turnaround is about if this is because of anything related to hardware or logistics and business.
And even 5 reuses matter if you want to do many launches. Because building them will be slow. So even if financially theoretically its not worth it, if you can increase your launch rate its still worth it.
And that gives you the time to continue iterating.
The jury’s still out on whether Starship needs fast reusability, too. The existing market for heavy lift launches is tiny. Starlink creates some demand, but beyond that SpaceX seems to be placing an incredible amount of faith in the idea that if you build it they will come.
But what happens if there isn’t actually that much pent-up, latent demand for flinging heavy things into orbit? What happens if people still mostly want to launch the same size stuff they already do? Starship could become the paratransit shuttle of space: inexpensive, yes, but also inconvenient because of having to share the ride with so many other people that all have different destinations and schedules. In that case we might see that demand for Starship remains low due to potential customers deciding the extra cost of a different option is worth the added convenience. Anyone who’s chosen an Uber even though the city bus can get them to their destination for 1/10 the price should be familiar with the principle.
> The existing market for heavy lift launches is tiny
I can see the value in this though if we end up developing space and Moon, and a vehicle like this could open the doors for that, unlike now. If China has long term plans for that, it's probably a good indicator of future market.
That’s such a big if, though. Not just around how long it will take. Around whether it will happen at all. There are still a bunch of unknowns that need to be resolved before we can know whether any such plans are economically viable. What I’ve personally observed is that a lot of these ideas look great when presented as concept art, but iffy at best once you start trying to do any back of the envelope estimates.
That certainly doesn’t mean it will never happen or that it’s not worth trying. But I’ve noticed that in these online discussions there’s a tendency to treat moonshot programs as if they’re sure bets.
Also don’t forget social factors. The US had been actively working on establishing more of a presence on the moon, too. But the current administration more-or-less killed it because they didn’t like how much it was costing.
[−]burnerRhodov3 · 2026-11-15 Sun 17:12 UTC ·
link
You are right, they will repeat what they did with falcon.. They created the demand. They created starlink because they created so much capacity, they needed to put it somewhere. Now they will create Starlink v3 to completely dominate the internet market worldwide. Ontop of starlink V3, they have Starlink V4 in the works which will include direct to cell capability along with building land based towers worldwide. Finally, they have Starmind, for orbital compute.
They don't need/ want to sell capacity. They want to constrain the capacity for themselves, which is obviously the better business move. Look at falcon 9 launches... It's not like they drastically lowered their pricing, they've been raising there pricing dramatically because they want to phase falcon 9 out.
SpaceX seems to be rather foolishly planning on completely replacing the Falcon 9 and Falcon heavy with Starship which is going to create demand for it.
I don’t think it’s foolish, for more or less the above reason. Starlink is the market for Falcon 9. Without that it apparently isn’t so profitable, because outside of Starlink the demand for a system with that kind of launch cadence just didn’t really materialize.
But that’s also why I’m skeptical about whether Starship will live up to the hype. The whole case for how it’s supposed to revolutionize spaceflight rests on the assumption that it can tap into a huge well of latent demand to put stuff in orbit. If such a well really does exist then we have to ask why Falcon 9 wasn’t able to tap into it despite all of its obvious merits.
[−]burnerRhodov3 · 2026-11-15 Sun 17:07 UTC ·
link
It's about takt time. And that's all elon thinks about. It has nothing to do with the landing gear.. even though as you said that's a slight modification. It's about being able to land it where you build, referb, etc.
Do you know how expensive it is to transport a 40 ton skyscraper? Now they can just put it on the transport stand, drive it over to mega bay, refurb while they are putting they next payload on board, and drive it back over to the pad.
I would imagine it’s the weight savings of not having to carry thousands of pounds worth of landing legs onboard the rocket.
Don't the launchpads have systems in place to prevent that? Eg the sound suppression system where they basically spray water into the air to absorb the sound. Does the landing pad have that?
Then again, I wouldn't know how to solve this better -- if you say, have a cover protecting the engines before re-lighting, you're not shedding speed any better than without it, and after re-entry and when the speeds are relatively modest (only, say, 400mph 2-3km up vs 4000mph at 100+km) the air itself doesn't do anything to the engines anyway.
The booster has flaps that help it shed speed, but the Starship's flaps are very different, aren't they? And it's not exactly the kind of a flying brick that Space Shuttle was, either -- having it coast longer before it flips to be caught by Mechazilla, isn't a solution then...
Just ramblings of an amateur :B
I don't think catching (vs. landing) is a "new space era" game changer, but it offers several advantages in a game (chemical rocketry) where some margins are very thin -
- No need for a separate landing pad. Which might need its own flame trench, for reasons others have noted.
- You already have the chopsticks for pre-launch stacking.
- Because you're stacking with chopsticks, you already have those hard points on the Starship. (Hard points are spots engineered to bear heavy loads, in contrast to fragile areas. On large aerospace structures, hard points are expensive in engineering, manufacturing, and weight.)
- Landing legs on a hard surface require larger safety margins. Or a lot of springs, shock absorbers, and such. (Falcon 9's landing legs include those.) That's because the transient loads during an off-by-5-cm landing can be 3X or more the static loads on your landing legs. Vs. if you land on the chopsticks - all the springs and stuff can be built into them. With chemical rocketry's thin margins, not needing to carry that extra weight to space and back is a serious win.
If you mean why catching is (anything) better than landing (anything)? Landing gear is heavy. All the weight and mechatronics and complexity of the landing gear systems takes mass that could've been payload. Put the "landing gear" on the tower instead and the launch vehicle doesn't eat the cost of the weight. It's an optimization but not an order of magnitude revolution compared to a fully reusable heavy lift platform.
Fastest Falcon 9 turnaround was 9 days, I wouldn't expect Musk's 1 hour turnaround target for Starship to ever be reached.
And even 5 reuses matter if you want to do many launches. Because building them will be slow. So even if financially theoretically its not worth it, if you can increase your launch rate its still worth it.
And that gives you the time to continue iterating.
But what happens if there isn’t actually that much pent-up, latent demand for flinging heavy things into orbit? What happens if people still mostly want to launch the same size stuff they already do? Starship could become the paratransit shuttle of space: inexpensive, yes, but also inconvenient because of having to share the ride with so many other people that all have different destinations and schedules. In that case we might see that demand for Starship remains low due to potential customers deciding the extra cost of a different option is worth the added convenience. Anyone who’s chosen an Uber even though the city bus can get them to their destination for 1/10 the price should be familiar with the principle.
I can see the value in this though if we end up developing space and Moon, and a vehicle like this could open the doors for that, unlike now. If China has long term plans for that, it's probably a good indicator of future market.
That certainly doesn’t mean it will never happen or that it’s not worth trying. But I’ve noticed that in these online discussions there’s a tendency to treat moonshot programs as if they’re sure bets.
Also don’t forget social factors. The US had been actively working on establishing more of a presence on the moon, too. But the current administration more-or-less killed it because they didn’t like how much it was costing.
They don't need/ want to sell capacity. They want to constrain the capacity for themselves, which is obviously the better business move. Look at falcon 9 launches... It's not like they drastically lowered their pricing, they've been raising there pricing dramatically because they want to phase falcon 9 out.
But that’s also why I’m skeptical about whether Starship will live up to the hype. The whole case for how it’s supposed to revolutionize spaceflight rests on the assumption that it can tap into a huge well of latent demand to put stuff in orbit. If such a well really does exist then we have to ask why Falcon 9 wasn’t able to tap into it despite all of its obvious merits.
Do you know how expensive it is to transport a 40 ton skyscraper? Now they can just put it on the transport stand, drive it over to mega bay, refurb while they are putting they next payload on board, and drive it back over to the pad.