this blurry video shows onboard footage of the falcon 9 and what you could call its
first successful landing this was before the rocket had ever landed on land or on the drone
ship but in order to build up to that spacex was first trying to prove that the rocket could guide
itself towards a target and come to a stop on an almost exact point they had previously
tried to do a soft water landing in 2013 but the falcon 9 came in too fast and exploded on impact
this time however everything went just right and spacex was able to learn a lot from this
first landing despite this however when it came to doing the real thing on a drone ship
spacex had many tries before they finally nailed a landing the best thing is to read the comments
on that old video where people lived in a world where spacex landings weren't a normal thing
over 128 landings later and spacex has pretty much mastered this technique but now they are looking
to master another important technique starship booster 7 has now begun its long campaign of
testing and despite a few rather dramatic setbacks we should see it and its partner
sn24 make the very first orbital attempt to buy a starship rocket just to be clear this will be the
largest and most powerful rocket ever made when it launches and with 33 raptor engines on the booster
so many things can go wrong even if the rocket only makes it a few meters off the launch pad
it will still be incredibly exciting but the part that i'm most looking forward to is obviously the
booster landing so in this video we're going to ask the question will spacex try to catch
it on their first attempt the most sensible answer would be no but if they don't catch it this time
then when will they try to catch it a while ago spacex filed its plan for starship's first orbital
test flight however this was a very brief plan that didn't have a lot of information since then
many boosters and starships have come and gone and the raptor engine has become even more developed
so it's likely that plans have now changed however this was the original plan starship
would launch from boko chika and the booster would separate about 170 seconds into flight
from there the booster would fire up its engines and start returning to the coast aiming to perform
a soft water landing just 20 miles offshore the second stage would keep going until it reached
orbit and then it would re-enter and perform a similar soft splashdown this time 60 miles off the
coast of kauai perhaps the most interesting thing from this document is that for the ship's landing
it said splashdown and for the booster it only said touchdown and nowhere else in the document
did it ever refer to the booster splashing down in any kind of controlled or gentle way
either this is because they never actually planned on doing any kind of landing in the first place
or they intended to land it in a different or more familiar way like landing on a drone ship
or some kind of ocean platform the only piece of information this document gave away is that
it said the booster would land in the gulf of mexico but we now know that at the start of this
year spacex started posting new jobs for marine recovery engineers to support the starship program
well these jobs didn't mention spacex's oil rigs which are currently being converted into
floating launch and landing platforms these job postings suggest that spacex
could still be looking to land super heavy on some kind of barge or floating platform
an option that spacex could be keeping open is using one of their oil rigs once it has been
stripped down to use as a flat landing pad out at sea but i think this is very unlikely however
at least for the first couple of booster landings since we haven't really seen any
evidence of the oil rigs being ready or any kind of legs being designed for the booster
but recently spacex released an updated launch plan which revealed some interesting information
the plan shows a very similar flight path to the previous plan but it then says the booster will
perform a partial return to land in the gulf of mexico or return to starbase to be caught by the
launch tower so after all it looks like spacex could attempt to catch on the very first attempt
which would be crazy and pretty scary to watch but i'm actually not so surprised by this
after all spacex has a habit of absolutely sending it on their first attempt the falcon heavy test
flight involved doing a lot of new things for the very first time it was the first time spacex had
ever fired up so many merlin engines at the same time it was the first time they had separated
multiple boosters and it was the first time that two boosters performed simultaneous landings
another reason i thought that they might try to catch it for the first time is because they can
drastically reduce the risk of something going wrong by being a bit more flexible with the
falcon 9 landings the rocket actually aims for a spot away from the drone ship or landing pad
and so the natural trajectory will actually take it into the ocean this is so that if something has
failed on the rocket like an engine or the grid fins the rocket will miss the drone ship and not
damage any important equipment if everything seems to be working correctly the booster will
start aiming for the drone ship and perform a maneuver to translate towards the landing pad
i think that this is exactly what spacex is aiming to do with super heavy it could
be that if the booster performs exactly how they want it on a zen and during its return that they
are confident enough to aim for the chopsticks if the booster has some kind of issue it will simply
continue falling and end up in the water if this happens spacex could still attempt some kind of
catch simulation by performing the landing burn even if it does end up in the water i really hope
that it touches down gently so spacex can tow the booster back into port for them to inspect then
we'd get to see awesome pictures like this from when a falcon 9 ended up in the water but why
would spacex risk catching it on the first attempt anyway let's be honest it does seem extremely
risky to do this on the first attempt especially with all the extra hardware that surrounds the
launch pad which could cause a massive setback if destroyed but spacex perhaps has a lot of
confidence from landing the falcon 9 so many times both vehicles control themselves in very similar
ways with the grid fans and gas thrusters helping them to steer their way back to the landing pad
but it's no doubt that super heavy is a different beast altogether that will almost certainly throw
up some surprises just look at the recent booster 7 test it was the first time that spacex had
tested all 33 engines at once and it caught him off guard but what happens if the catch goes wrong
how bad could the damage be well despite the size of super heavy when it comes into land it's almost
completely empty with just a fraction of the propellants remaining to perform the landing burn
so even if an explosion did happen i wouldn't expect it to be any more damaging than the
previous starship explosions the biggest worry in my opinion is if the booster misses and completely
obliterates the tower or tank farm with the velocity and mass of super heavy as it comes in
it could do some serious irreparable damage it would be such a shame to see the tower destroyed
this way but at least spacex now has a second starship tower under construction in florida this
tower is coming together extremely quickly and it should be almost finished by the end of the year
but let's think positively even if spacex doesn't go for the catch attempt
the launch will be spectacular seeing a fully stacked starship on the pad
knowing it's absolutely full of propellant will be exciting and terrifying at the same time
and on the slim chance that they actually do catch super heavy on the first attempt it will
be the craziest thing we've ever seen so let me know what you think in the comments below do you
think spacex will attempt to catch super heavy on the first flight do you think starship will even
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