Elon musk plans to catch SpaceX's most powerful rocket rather than land it
Several minutes later, the first stage booster used for liftoff makes its way back to the launch tower, where it is "caught" by a specially designed arm and readied for another launch in as soon as an hour.
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The SpaceX chief hinted at this plan in a series of tweets Wednesday
We're going to try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load," he wrote in response
Super Heavy is the next-generation booster designed to be paired with the SpaceX Starship now under development at the company's facility in Texas
Musk's vision is that Starship will eventually carry up to 100 passengers out into the solar system and on super quick transcontinental flights via space.
The current SpaceX workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9 used to launch satellites and missions to the International Space Station, returns to Earth and lands using retractable landing legs
Saves mass & cost of legs & enables immediate repositioning of booster on to launch mount -- ready to refly in under an hour," he tweeted
The move redirects the stress of a landing onto the grid fins, which are located near the top of the booster and are essentially used to steer the rocket during flight, and onto some sort of apparatus on the launch tower that the grid fins will come to rest on