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SpaceX’s second Super Heavy booster might land in Mechazilla’s arms

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4 years ago

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CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX could attempt to catch a Super Heavy booster out of mid-air with a tower-sized ‘Mechazilla’ robot as early as Starship’s second orbital launch attempt.

Speaking on Twitter just hours after SpaceX installed said Starship launch tower’s first arms, Musk has thankfully answered a question on the minds of many: how many prototype boosters must be expended? In a move that can be only described as unexpected, SpaceX revealed plans to fully expend its first orbital-class Starship and Super Heavy booster pair in May 2021 FCC filings, confirming (or strongly implying) that no true recovery attempts would be made.

Instead, in what could be described as a quasi-orbital debut, SpaceX intends to launch the first two-stage Starship to an altitude of around 200-300 km (TBD). Like many Falcon boosters, Super Heavy will separate a few minutes after liftoff, flip around, and boost back towards the South Texas coast, where it will attempt a soft landing 20 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Reading between the lines of Musk’s latest info, depending on the results of that ocean landing attempt, SpaceX might attempt to catch the second flightworthy Super Heavy booster on the very next launch.

Heading towards a similar fate, Starship will continue onwards and upwards like a Falcon upper stage. Based on its FCC application, SpaceX seems to have implied that Starship will stop just short of true orbit – traveling slow enough to passively reenter Earth’s atmosphere before completing a full trip around the planet. Of course, it’s possible that SpaceX simply left out plans for an intentional deorbit burn, but it does make sense that the company might try to lock in safeguards for such an ambitious inaugural test flight.

In other words, if Starship were to fail during the ~80 minutes it would spend coasting in space, its launch trajectory design would more or less passively prevent a Russian roulette scenario reminiscent of China’s recent spate of uncontrolled reentries. The feats facing Super Heavy are thankfully a fair bit simpler, though Starship booster recovery does pose its own hurdles.

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In an apparent effort to reduce risk, SpaceX intends to fully expend the first flightworthy Super Heavy (potentially Booster 4) and all 29 of its Raptor engines. There will be no attempt at all to land the booster or its one-of-a-kind engines at land or on a sea-based platform – partly because Elon Musk appears to have endeavored to entirely prevent the installation – and, perhaps, the design and assembly – of legs. Instead, in one of the eccentric executive’s less intuitive gambles as of late, SpaceX will entirely dispense of more than half a decade of experience landing 90+ Falcon boosters on legs to attempt to catch Super Heavy boosters out of the air with house-sized arms tacked onto a 145m (~475 ft) tall tower.

The launch tower’s ‘chopstick’ catcher arms (left) and what’s believed to be the carriage (right) they’ll be mounted on are almost ready for installation. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)

No different than a hypothetical landing with legs, Super Heavy will still have to boost back to land, coast, and fire up several Raptor engines for a final landing burn – only on tiny handle-like hardpoints and giant moving arms instead of legs and a concrete pad. If catching boosters eventually proves reliable enough to be a worthwhile reinvention of the wheel, the only apparent benefit of the approach will be a slight reduction in Super Heavy’s dry mass.

According to Musk, though, SpaceX might not have to wait long to find out just how viable a recovery method ‘Mechazilla’ really is and will “hopefully” attempt to catch Super Heavy Booster 5 (B5) after Starship’s second orbital launch attempt. Presumably, that attempt is contingent upon FAA approval and on Booster 4 successfully simulating a smooth, accurate landing in the Gulf, as even a minor issue during a catch attempt could catastrophically damage pad hardware that would take months to repair or replace.

For now, it’s almost impossible to say when Starship S20 and Super Heavy B4 will be ready for their orbital launch debut, as that now lies almost solely in the hands of the FAA. In theory, the FAA could complete environmental reviews and grant SpaceX a launch license as few as two or so months from now. In practice, SpaceX could be forced to sit and wait for at least 6-12 more months. Regardless, SpaceX has already begun assembling and staging sections of Ship 21 and Booster 5, so the company could be ready for an extremely rapid turnaround (and Mechazilla’s first catch attempt) after Starship’s orbital launch debut – whenever that may come.

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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 sends clear message to Waymo with latest Austin Robotaxi move

It is the first expansion Tesla has made in Austin since the one on August 26. The company still operates in the Bay Area of California as well, referring to that program specifically as a “ride-hailing service.”

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48 minutes ago

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October 28, 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has sent a clear message to Waymo with its latest move to its Robotaxi program in Austin, Texas.

Tesla and Waymo are the two true leaders in autonomous ride-hailing to an extent. Tesla has what many believe is a lot of potential due to its prowess with the Supervised Full Self-Driving suite. It is also operating a driverless Robotaxi service in Austin with a “Safety Monitor” that sits in the passenger’s seat.

Tesla explains why Robotaxis now have safety monitors in the driver’s seat

The two companies have been competing heavily in the market since they both launched driverless ride-hailing services in Austin this year: Waymo’s in March and Tesla’s in June.

One of the main drivers in the competition between the two is service area size, or the geofence in which the cars will operate without a driver. In August, the two were tied with a service area of about 90 square miles (233.099 sq. km).

Tesla then expanded to about 170 square miles (440.298 sq. km) on August 26, dwarfing Waymo’s service area and expanding to freeways. Tesla’s freeway operation of the Robotaxi suite requires the Safety Monitor to be in the driver’s seat for safety reasons.

On Tuesday evening, Tesla made another move that sent a clear message to Waymo, as it expanded once again, this time to 243 square miles (629.367 sq. km).

This is according to Robotracker:

It is the first expansion Tesla has made in Austin since the one on August 26. The company still operates in the Bay Area of California as well, referring to that program specifically as a “ride-hailing service.”

Yesterday, it expanded that service to the San Jose Mineta International Airport, something it has been working on for several months.

Waymo has its own set of distinct advantages over Tesla as well, as it operates in more cities and states than the EV maker. Waymo currently has its autonomous vehicle services in Phoenix, Arizona, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta, Georgia.

Tesla plans to have half of the U.S. population with access to the Robotaxi platform by the end of the year.

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Tesla exec reveals shock development with Cybercab

“If we have to have a steering wheel, it can have a steering wheel and pedals.”

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11 hours ago

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October 28, 2025

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(Credit: Teslarati)

Tesla is planning to launch the Cybercab in the second quarter of next year, and it is designed to be fully autonomous, so much so that the company is planning to build it without a steering wheel or pedals.

However, a Tesla executive said today that the company could ditch that idea altogether in what would be a major shift from the plans the company, and especially its CEO Elon Musk, have announced for the Cybercab.

Earlier today, Robyn Denholm, the company’s Chair for the Board of Directors, revealed that Tesla would potentially switch up its plans for the Cybercab based on potential regulatory requirements.

Credit: Tesla Europe & Middle East | X

Currently, even autonomous vehicles that operate for companies like Tesla and Waymo are required to have steering wheels and pedals. From a regulatory perspective, this could halt the plans Tesla has for Cybercab.

Denholm said in an interview with Bloomberg:

“If we have to have a steering wheel, it can have a steering wheel and pedals.”

Interestingly, Musk and Tesla have not veered away from the idea that the vehicle will be without these operational must-haves.

Since the vehicle was revealed last October at the We, Robot event in Los Angeles, Tesla has maintained that the car would be built without a steering wheel or pedals, and would equip two seats, which is what is statistically most popular in ride-sharing, as the vast majority of rides have only one or two passengers.

Musk doubled down on the plans for Cybercab as recently as last week, when he said:

“That’s really a vehicle that’s optimized for full autonomy. It, in fact, does not have a steering wheel or pedals and is really an enduring optimization on minimizing cost per mile for fully considered cost per mile of operation. For our other vehicles, they still have a little bit of the horse carriage thing going on where, obviously, if you’ve got steering wheels and pedals and you’re designing a car that people might want to go very direct past acceleration and tight cornering, like high-performance cars, then you’re going to design a different car than one that is optimized for a comfortable ride and doesn’t expect to go past sort of 85 or 90 miles an hour.”

Cybercab is fully conceptualized as a vehicle that has zero need for pedals or a steering wheel because it is aimed toward being fully reliant on a Level 5 autonomous platform.

Tesla is ramping its hiring for Cybercab vehicle manufacturing roles

Regulators could get in the way of this, however, and although the car could drive itself and be a great solution for ride-hailing, it might need to have these controls to hit the road in the future.

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SpaceX opens up free Starlink service for those impacted by Hurricane Melissa

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13 hours ago

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October 28, 2025

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(Credit: Starlink | X)

SpaceX is opening up its internet service, Starlink, to those impacted by Hurricane Melissa, as it made landfall in Jamaica and the Bahamas as a Category 5 storm.

Hurricane Melissa is expected to reach wind speeds of over 165 MPH over the next few days as it extends out into the Atlantic Ocean by Thursday and Friday.

Citizens in Jamaica and the Bahamas have been preparing for the storm for the past week, getting necessary goods together and preparing for the massive storm to arrive. It finally did yesterday, and the first images and video of the storm are showing that it could destroy many parts of both countries.

Starlink is now being opened up for free until the end of November for those impacted by the storm in Jamaica and the Bahamas, SpaceX announced today:

It is a move similar to the one the company made last year as Hurricane Helene made its way through the United States, destroying homes and property across the East Coast. SpaceX offered free service for those impacted by the destruction caused by the storm.

The free Starlink service was available until the end of 2024.

Elon Musk’s companies have also made similar moves to help out those who are impacted by natural disasters. Tesla has offered Free Supercharging in the past, most notably during the California wildfires.

Tesla and SpaceX’s LA fire relief efforts: Cybertrucks, free Starlink and more

One major advantage of Starlink is that it is available for use in situations like this one, where power might be required to operate things like a modem and router.

Internet access is a crucial part of survival in these situations, especially as it can be the last leg some stand on to get in touch with emergency services or loved ones.

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