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SpaceX Starship boosters could forgo landings entirely, says Elon Musk

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5 years ago

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that Starship’s Super Heavy boosters could forgo landings entirely, relying instead on a wild crane-based solution to recover the world’s largest rocket stage.

Starship’s Super Heavy booster prepares to boost back to the pad after launch. (SpaceX)

As previously discussed on Teslarati, the Super Heavy booster tasked with carrying a ~1400-ton (~300,000 lb) Starship around 25% of the way to orbit will be the largest rocket stage ever built – and by a large margin.

“Standing about as tall as an entire two-stage Falcon 9 rocket at 70 meters (230 ft) tip to tail, the Super Heavy booster tasked with getting Starship about a quarter of the way to orbit will be the largest rocket stage ever built. Outfitted with up to 28 Raptors capable of producing more than ~7300 metric tons (~16.2 million lbf) of thrust at liftoff, Super Heavy will also be the most powerful rocket ever built, respectively outclassing Saturn V and SpaceX’s own Falcon Heavy by a factor of more than two and three.”

Teslarati.com – December 29th, 2020

Prior to today, December 30th, SpaceX’s plan was to more or less recover Super Heavy boosters in a similar fashion to Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, landing them either far downrange on an ocean-based platform or returning to touch down as close as possible to the launch pad. Ever since the first iteration of SpaceX’s Mars rocket was publicly revealed in 2016, SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk have also maintained a consistent desire to land Super Heavy boosters directly on top of the launch mount after a great deal of refinement.

Launch mount recovery would require unprecedented precision and accuracy and add a new element of risk or a need for extraordinarily sturdy pad hardware. However, the benefits would be equally significant, entirely eliminating the need for expensive recovery assets, time-consuming transport, and even the time it would take to crane Super Heavy boosters back onto the launch mount from a pad-adjacent landing zone.

Instead, Musk says that SpaceX might be able to quite literally catch Super Heavy in mid-air, grabbing the booster before it can touch the ground by somehow slotting an elaborate “launch tower arm” underneath its steel grid fins. Although such a solution sounds about as complex and risky as it gets, it would technically preclude the need for any and all booster recovery infrastructure – even including the legs Super Heavy would otherwise need.

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While true, catching Super Heavy by its grid fins would likely demand that control surfaces and the structures they attach to be substantially overbuilt – especially if Musk means that the crane arm mechanism would be able to catch anywhere along the deployed fins’ 7m (23 ft) length. Even more importantly, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that such a complex and unproven recovery method could be made to work reliably on the first one or several tries, implying that early boosters will still need some kind of rudimentary landing legs.

In other words, much like direct-to-launch-mount landings, mid-air-crane-catch recovery is probably not a feature expected to debut on Super Heavy v1.0.

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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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Tesla takes first step in sunsetting Model S and X with drastic move

Tesla won’t be taking custom orders of the Model S or Model X in Europe any longer.

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2 hours ago

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July 30, 2025

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Credit: @supergeek18 | X

Tesla has seemingly taken the first step in sunsetting two of its older vehicles, the Model S and Model X, by ending international orders.

The flagship sedan and SUV from Tesla are the two oldest cars in the company’s lineup. They account for a very small portion of overall sales, and several years ago, CEO Elon Musk admitted that Tesla only continues to build and sell them due to “sentimental reasons.”

Earlier this year, there were calls for Tesla to end the production of the two cars, but Lars Moravy said that the Model S and Model X were due to get some love later in 2025. That happened, but the changes were extremely minor.

Tesla launches new Model S and Model X, and the changes are slim

Some took this as an indication that Tesla has kind of moved on from the Model S and Model X. A handful of people seemed to think Tesla would overhaul the vehicles substantially, but the changes were extremely minor and included only a few real adjustments.

In Europe, customers are unable to even put a new order in on a Model S or Model X.

We noticed earlier today that Tesla pressing the ‘Order’ button on either of the flagship vehicles takes you to local inventory, and not the Design Studio where you’d configure your custom build:

Tesla simply does not make enough Model S or Model X units to justify the expensive logistics process of shipping custom orders overseas. It almost seems as if they’re that they will essentially build a bunch of random configurations, send them overseas every few months, and let them sell before replenishing inventory.

Inversely, it could also mean Tesla is truly gearing up to sunset the vehicle altogether. It seems unlikely that the company will fade them out altogether in the next couple of years, but it could absolutely think about ending international orders because volume is so low.

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Energy

Tesla inks multi-billion-dollar deal with LG Energy Solution to avoid tariff pressure

Tesla has reportedly secured a sizable partnership with LGES for LFP cells, and there’s an extra positive out of it.

Published

8 hours ago

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July 30, 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has reportedly inked a multi-billion-dollar deal with LG Energy Solution in an effort to avoid tariff pressure and domesticate more of its supply chain.

Reuters is reporting that Tesla and LGES, a South Korean battery supplier of the automaker, signed a $4.3 billion deal for energy storage system batteries. The cells are going to be manufactured by LGES at its U.S. factory located in Michigan, the report indicates. The batteries will be the lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, chemistry.

Tesla delivers 384,000 vehicles in Q2 2025, deploys 9.6 GWh in energy storage

It is a move Tesla is making to avoid buying cells and parts from overseas as the Trump White House continues to use tariffs to prioritize domestic manufacturing.

LGES announced earlier today that it had signed a $4.3 billion contract to supply LFP cells over three years to a company, but it did not identify the customer, nor did the company state whether the batteries would be used in automotive or energy storage applications.

The deal is advantageous for both companies. Tesla is going to alleviate its reliance on battery cells that are built out of the country, so it’s going to be able to take some financial pressure off itself.

For LGES, the company has reported that it has experienced slowed demand for its cells in terms of automotive applications. It planned to offset this demand lag with more projects involving the cells in energy storage projects. This has been helped by the need for these systems at data centers used for AI.

During the Q1 Earnings Call, Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja confirmed that the company’s energy division had been impacted by the need to source cells from China-based suppliers. He went on to say that the company would work on “securing additional supply chain from non-China-based suppliers.”

It seems as if Tesla has managed to secure some of this needed domestic supply chain.

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Lifestyle

Tesla brings perhaps the coolest interior feature to cars in latest update

Tesla adds on to the “fun” aspect of its vehicles.

Published

9 hours ago

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July 30, 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has brought perhaps the coolest interior feature to its cars in a new update that is rolling out to vehicles now.

The feature will require a newer vehicle that has interior ambient lighting, which is present on the new Model S, Model X, Model 3 “Highland,” and Model Y “Juniper.” The Cybertruck also has ambient lighting strips throughout.

Tesla Model Y’s ambient lighting design changes revealed in leaked video

With the Version 2025.26+ Software Update, Tesla is rolling out a new “Sync Accent Lights w/ Music” feature, which is available on the Tesla Toybox:

To enable the feature, you’ll access the Toybox, choose “Light Sync,” and then choose “Sync Accent Lights w/ Music.”

Although it does not improve the performance of the vehicle, it is yet another example of Tesla making one of the coolest cars out there. This is truly a cool add-on that can be used to impress your friends and family.

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