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SpaceX rocket catch simulation raises more questions about concept
CEO Elon Musk has published the first official visualization of what SpaceX’s plans to catch Super Heavy boosters might look like in real life. However, the simulation he shared raises just as many questions as it answers.
Since at least late 2020, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been floating the idea of catching Starships and Super Heavy boosters out of the sky as an alternative to having the several-dozen-ton steel rockets use basic legs to land on the ground. This would be a major departure from SpaceX’s highly successful Falcon family, which land on a relatively complex set of deployable legs that can be retracted after most landings. The flexible, lightweight structures have mostly been reliable and easily reusable but Falcon boosters occasionally have rough landings, which can use up disposable shock absorbers or even damage the legs and make boosters hard to safely recover and slower to reuse.
As a smaller rocket, Falcon boosters have to be extremely lightweight to ensure healthy payload margins and likely weigh about 25-30 tons empty and 450 tons fully fueled – an excellent mass ratio for a reusable rocket. While it’s still good to continue that practice of rigorous mass optimization with Starship, the vehicle is an entirely different story. Once plans to stretch the Starship upper stage’s tanks and add three more Raptors are realized, it’s quite possible that Starship will be capable of launching more than 200 tons (~440,000 lb) of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO) with ship and booster recovery.
One might think that SpaceX, with the most capable rocket ever built potentially on its hands, would want to take advantage of that unprecedented performance to make the rocket itself – also likely to be one of the most complex launch vehicles ever – simpler and more reliable early on in the development process. Generally speaking, that would involve sacrificing some of its payload capability and adding systems that are heavier but simpler and more robust. Once Starship is regularly flying to orbit and gathering extensive flight experience and data, SpaceX might then be able refine the rocket, gradually reducing its mass and improving payload to orbit by optimizing or fully replacing suboptimal systems and designs.
Instead, SpaceX appears to be trying to substantially optimize Starship before it’s attempted a single orbital launch. The biggest example is Elon Musk’s plan to catch Super Heavy boosters – and maybe Starships, too – for the sole purpose of, in his own words, “[saving] landing leg mass [and enabling] immediate reflight of [a giant, unwieldy rocket].” Musk, SpaceX executives, or both appear to be attempting to refine a rocket that has never flown. Further, based on a simulation of a Super Heavy “catch” Musk shared on January 20th, all that oddly timed effort may end up producing a solution that’s actually worse than what it’s trying to replace.
Based on the simulated telemetry shown in the visualization, Super Heavy’s descent to the landing zone appears to be considerably gentler than the ‘suicide burn’ SpaceX routinely uses on Falcon. By decelerating as quickly as possible and making landing burns as short as possible, Falcon saves a considerable amount of propellant during recovery – extra propellant that, if otherwise required, would effectively increase Falcon’s dry mass and decrease its payload to orbit. In the Super Heavy “catch” Musk shared, the booster actually appears to be landing – just on an incredibly small patch of steel on the tower’s ‘Mechazilla’ arms instead of a concrete pad on the ground.
Aside from a tiny bit of lateral motion, the arms appear motionless during the ‘catch,’ making it more of a landing. Further, Super Heavy is shown decelerating rather slowly throughout the simulation and appears to hover for almost 10 seconds near the end. That slow, cautious descent and even slower touchdown may be necessary because of how incredibly accurate Super Heavy has to be to land on a pair of hardpoints with inches of lateral margin for error and maybe a few square feet of usable surface area. The challenge is a bit like if SpaceX, for some reason, made Falcon boosters land on two elevated ledges about as wide as car tires. Aside from demanding accurate rotational control, even the slightest lateral deviation would cause the booster to topple off the pillars and – in the case of Super Heavy – fall about a hundred feet onto concrete, where it would obviously explode.
What that slow descent and final hover mean is that the Super Heavy landing shown would likely cost significantly more delta V (propellant) than a Falcon-style suicide burn. Propellant has mass, so Super Heavy would likely need to burn at least 5-10 tons more to carefully land on arms that aren’t actively matching the booster’s position and velocity. Ironically, SpaceX could probably quite easily add rudimentary, fixed legs – removing most of the bad aspects of Falcon legs – to Super Heavy with a mass budget of 10 tons. But even if SpaceX were to make those legs as simple, dumb, and reliable as physically possible and they wound up weighing 20 tons total, the inherent physics of rocketry mean that adding 20 tons to Super Heavy’s likely 200-ton dry mass would only reduce the rocket’s payload to orbit by about 3-5 tons or 1-3%.
Further, per Musk’s argument that landing on the arms would enhance the speed of reuse, it’s difficult to see how landing Super Heavy or Starship in the exact same corridor – but on the ground instead of on the arms – would change anything. If Super Heavy is accurate enough to land on a few square meters of steel, it must inherently be accurate enough to land within the far larger breadth of those arms. The only process landing on the arms would clearly remove is reattaching the arms to a landed booster or ship, which it’s impossible to imagine would save more than a handful of minutes or maybe an hour of work. SpaceX’s Falcon booster turnaround record is currently 27 days, so it’s even harder to imagine why SpaceX would be worrying about cutting minutes or a few hours off of the turnaround and reuse of a rocket that has never even performed a full static fire test – let alone attempted an orbital-class launch, reentry, or landing.
Put simply, while Starbase’s launch tower arms will undoubtedly be useful for quickly lifting and stacking Super Heavy and Starship, it’s looking more and more likely that using those arms as a landing platform will, at best, be an inferior alternative to basic Falcon-style landings. More importantly, even if everything works perfectly, the arms actually cooperate with boosters to catch them, and it’s possible for Super Heavy to avoid hovering and use a more efficient suicide burn, the apparent best-case outcome of all that effort is marginally faster reuse and perhaps a 5% increase in payload to orbit. Only time will tell if such a radical change proves to be worth such marginal benefits.
News
Tesla Robotaxi wins over firm that said it was ‘likely to disappoint’
Tesla Robotaxi recently won over a Wall Street firm that had recently said the platform was “likely to disappoint.”
Tesla Robotaxi recently won over a Wall Street firm that had recently said the platform was “likely to disappoint.” The ride-hailing service has been operating for about a month, and driverless rides have been offered to a small group of people that continues to expand nearly every day.
JPMorgan went to Austin to test the Tesla Robotaxi platform, and it did so just a few weeks after listing Tesla as one of its “six stocks to short” in 2025. Highlighting the loss of the EV tax credit and labeling the Robotaxi initiative as one that was “likely to disappoint,” despite Tesla’s prowess in its self-driving software.
Analyst Ryan Brinkman has been skeptical of Tesla for some time, even stating that the company’s “sky-high valuation” was not in line with other stocks in the Magnificent Seven.
However, a recent visit to Texas that was made by JPMorgan analysts proved that the Robotaxi platform, despite being in its earliest stages, was enough for them to change their tune, at least slightly. The firm gave its props to the Tesla Robotaxi platform in a note by stating it was “certainly solid and felt like a safe ride at all times.”
It’s always nice to hear skeptics report positive experiences, especially as Robotaxi continues to improve and expand.
Tesla has already expanded its geofence for the Robotaxi suite in Austin, picking a very interesting shape for its newest boundaries:
Tesla’s Robotaxi expansion wasn’t a joke, it was a warning to competitors
As Robotaxi expands, Tesla is dealing with competition from Waymo, another self-driving ride-hailing service that is operating in Austin, among other areas. After Tesla’s expansion, which brought its accessible area to a greater size than Waymo’s, it responded by doubling its geofence.
Waymo’s expansion surpassed Tesla’s size considerably, and it seems Tesla is preparing to expand its geofence in the coming weeks.
Waymo responds to Tesla’s Robotaxi expansion in Austin with bold statement
The Robotaxi platform is not yet available to the public, but Tesla has been inviting more people to try it with every passing day. Currently, the map is roughly 42 square miles, but many believe Tesla is able to broaden this by a considerable margin whenever it decides.
Investor's Corner
Tesla needs to confront these concerns as its ‘wartime CEO’ returns: Wedbush
Tesla will report earnings for Q2 tomorrow. Here’s what Wedbush expects.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to report its earnings for the second quarter of 2025 tomorrow, and although Wall Street firm Wedbush is bullish as the company appears to have its “wartime CEO” back, it is looking for answers to a few concerns investors could have moving forward.
The firm’s lead analyst on Tesla, Dan Ives, has kept a bullish sentiment regarding the stock, even as Musk’s focus seemed to be more on politics and less on the company.
However, Musk has recently returned to his past attitude, which is being completely devoted and dedicated to his companies. He even said he would be sleeping in his office and working seven days a week:
Back to working 7 days a week and sleeping in the office if my little kids are away https://t.co/77cc6sRCFZ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2025
Nevertheless, Ives has continued to push suggestions forward about what Tesla should do, what its potential valuation could be in the coming years with autonomy, and how it will deal with the loss of the EV tax credit.
Tesla preps to expand Robotaxi geofence once again, answering Waymo
These questions are at the forefront of what Ives suggests Tesla should confront on tomorrow’s call, he wrote in a note to investors that was released on Tuesday morning:
“Clearly, losing the EV tax credits with the recent Beltway Bill will be a headwind to Tesla and competitors in the EV landscape looking ahead, and this cash cow will become less of the story (and FCF) in 2026. We would expect some directional guidance on this topic during the conference call. Importantly, we anticipate deliveries globally to rebound in 2H led by some improvement on the key China front with the Model Y refresh a catalyst.”
Ives and Wedbush believe the autonomy could be worth $1 trillion for Tesla, especially as it continues to expand throughout Austin and eventually to other territories.
In the near term, Ives expects Tesla to continue its path of returning to growth:
“While the company has seen significant weakness in China in previous quarters given the rising competitive landscape across EVs, Tesla saw a rebound in June with sales increasing for the first time in eight months reflecting higher demand for its updated Model Y as deliveries in the region are starting to slowly turn a corner with China representing the heart and lungs of the TSLA growth story. Despite seeing more low-cost models enter the market from Chinese OEMs like BYD, Nio, Xpeng, and others, the company’s recent updates to the Model Y spurred increased demand while the accelerated production ramp-up in Shanghai for this refresh cycle reflected TSLA’s ability to meet rising demand in the marquee region. If Musk continues to lead and remain in the driver’s seat at this pace, we believe Tesla is on a path to an accelerated growth path over the coming years with deliveries expected to ramp in the back-half of 2025 following the Model Y refresh cycle.”
Tesla will report earnings tomorrow at market close. Wedbush maintained its ‘Outperform’ rating and held its $500 price target.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is set to report its second-quarter 2025 financial results on Wednesday, July 23, after markets close. With this in mind, Tesla investors have aggregated their top questions for the company at its upcoming Q&A session.
The upcoming earnings report follows a mixed delivery quarter. Tesla produced over 410,000 vehicles and delivered more than 384,000 units globally. In the energy segment, Tesla deployed 9.6 GWh of storage products, continuing momentum for its Megapack business. Tesla’s vehicle sales are currently down year-over-year, though a good part of this was due to the Model Y changeover in the first quarter.
Following are Tesla investors’ top questions for management, as aggregated in Say.
- Can you give us some insight (into) how robotaxis have been performing so far and what rate you expect to expand in terms of vehicles, geofence, cities, and supervisors?
- What are the key technical and regulatory hurdles still remaining for unsupervised FSD to be available for personal use? Timeline?
- What specific factory tasks is Optimus currently performing, and what is the expected timeline for scaling production to enable external sales? How does Tesla envision Optimus contributing to revenue in the next 2–3 years?
- Can you provide an update on the development and production timeline for Tesla’s more affordable models? How will these models balance cost reduction with profitability, and what impact do you expect on demand in the current economic climate?
- When do you anticipate customer vehicles to receive unsupervised FSD?
- Are there any news for HW3 users getting retrofits or upgrades? Will they get HW4 or some future version of HW5?
- Have any meaningful Optimus milestones changed for this year or next, and will thousands of Optimus be performing tasks in Tesla factories by year-end?
- Will there be a new AI day to explain the advancements the Autopilot, Optimus, and Dojo/chip teams have made over the past several years? We still do not know much about HW4.
- Cybertruck ramp is now a year in, but sales have lagged other models. How are you thinking through boosting sales of such an incredible product?
- When will there be a new CEO compensation package presented and considered for the next stage of the company’s growth?
Tesla will release its Q2 update letter on its Investor Relations website after markets close on Wednesday. A live Q&A webcast with management will then follow at 4:30 p.m. CT (5:30 p.m. ET) to discuss the company’s performance and outlook.
Tesla Robotaxi wins over firm that said it was ‘likely to disappoint’
Tesla needs to confront these concerns as its ‘wartime CEO’ returns: Wedbush
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2025 earnings call: What investors want to know
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