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SpaceX rocket catch simulation raises more questions about concept

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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.

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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.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk confirms Tesla is already rolling out a new feature for in-car Grok

Tesla is already making in-car Grok more robust with a simple but effective feature that CEO Elon Musk says is “coming.”

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the company will roll out a new feature for in-car Grok as it is rolling out to vehicles for the first time.

Grok was just recently added as a feature to Tesla vehicles within the past week, but owners are already requesting some small changes to make it more convenient to use.

Tesla debuts hands-free Grok AI with update 2025.26: What you need to know

The first is already on the way, Musk confirmed, as WholeMarsBlog requested a simple, but useful feature for Grok as it is used within Tesla vehicles.

Whole Mars requested that “Hey Grok” be used as a wake word, automatically activating the AI assistant without having to touch any buttons. Musk confirmed it is already in development and on the way to vehicles:

This feature is incredibly similar to that of “Hey Siri” with iPhones and other iOS devices. The phone will recognize your voice and hear that prompt, automatically activating Siri. Apple’s assistant will then perform whatever task it is asked to perform. It’s a simple but effective performance feature.

Grok is already getting its first reviews from owners as it rolls out to owners for the first time. It is a long time coming, too. Tesla has been hinting that Grok would be enabled in the vehicles for a while now, and it just started its initial rollout last week.

Grok is available in vehicles with the AMD chip and requires Premium Connectivity or a WiFi connection to use.

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Tesla reveals key detail of Supercharger Diner, but it’s bigger than you think

Tesla has finally released one key detail about the Supercharger Diner, and it is bigger than what it appears at face-value.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has revealed a key detail of its Supercharger Diner as its launch date appears to be nearing, based on what we are seeing at the site currently.

The Supercharger Diner is located on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles and was first proposed as an idea by CEO Elon Musk back in 2018. Musk envisioned a drive-in movie-style 1950s-inspired diner that would feature elements such as servers on roller skates, large movie screens, and a menu inspired by classic treats from several decades ago.

A project that first broke ground in 2023, the Supercharger Diner has been in development for over two years, as Tesla performed demolition work at the site back in February of that year.

It has slowly moved forward, and drone footage shot this week seems to show things are nearly up and running. Musk even mentioned that he had eaten at the Diner Supercharger this week.

There are still details that Tesla has yet to announce and confirm. The most important thing is regarding the menu that will be served at the diner.

Tesla has not hinted at what it will be making for patrons at the restaurant, but Musk commended the food and said the diner would be one of the coolest spots in LA.

However, we now have details on another important thing about the restaurant: the hours.

Images taken by Aaron Cash of ABetterTheater.com show the diner will be open 24/7, as it appears on the front doors of the diner:

At first thought, it seems this will operate like any other diner, as many are open for 24 hours a day. Diners typically serve large menus with numerous options, catering to the tastes and moods of anyone who walks in.

People of all walks of life eat at diners, as the food is typically affordable, tasty, and available at any hour to serve those who are night owls or those who work non-typical schedules.

However, Tesla is a bit different, and it seems that this new venture into food service could eventually transition from human servers and cooks to robots, most notably the company’s in-house project of Optimus.

It is something straight out of a Star Wars movie. I can think of Obi-Wan Kenobi visiting Dex in his diner in Attack of the Clones to figure out where a poison dart was sourced from:

Eventually, Optimus will likely be working as an employee in the Tesla Diner, and 24/7 operation will be performed by the humanoid robot that aims to eliminate trivial tasks from humans.

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First glimpse of Tesla Model Y with six seats and extended wheelbase

It’s longer and taller than the regular Model Y, and it has a cool new badge.

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Credit: Tesla China

Tesla’s extended wheelbase Model Y has been announced by the electric vehicle maker on its official Weibo page in China. At the same time, details of the upcoming vehicle have been listed in the China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s (MIIT) new regulatory catalog.

The extended wheelbase Model Y

Tesla announced the upcoming vehicle on its official Weibo page, with the company noting that the new car will be called the “Model Y L.” Images posted by the company showed that the Model Y L will feature a “Model Y” badge with a stylized “Y” graphic. A teaser image of the vehicle taken from its side also emphasizes the extra space that was gained from its extended wheelbase.

The MIIT listing for the Model Y L indicated that the vehicle would be 4,976 mm long, 1,920 mm wide, and 1,668 mm high. Its wheelbase was listed in the MIIT’s catalog as 3,040 mm. In comparison, the new Model Y is currently 4,797 mm long, 1,920 mm wide, and 1,624 mm high, with a wheelbase of 2,890 mm. 

Six seats and some power

Most notably, the extended wheelbase Model Y was listed in the MIIT regulatory catalog as a six-seat model. The vehicle is also listed with the product model number TSL6500BEVBA0, as noted in a CNEV Post report. And as hinted in Tesla China’s Weibo post, the vehicle will be released sometime in the fall.

The Model Y L is listed as a dual motor vehicle with peak power outputs of 142 kW and 198 kW for the front and rear motors. The vehicle is also listed with ternary batteries supplied by LG Energy Solution, and it reportedly weighs 2,088 kilograms (4603 pounds). In comparison, the new Model Y Dual Motor AWD weighs 4391 pounds.

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Tesla China has not hinted at the price of the new Model Y L, though expectations are high that the vehicle will be priced at about RMB 400,000 ($55,764). It also remains to be seen if the Model Y L will also be produced in Tesla’s vehicle factories in the United States and Germany.

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