Starship's chopstick act lights way for low-cost astronautics

A new giant step toward making rockets completely reusable was made when the SpaceX Starship successfully landed at a designated position alongside a landing tower six minutes after launch on Sunday.

A video that has gone viral on social networking sites shows two robotic arms of Mechazilla, or the landing tower for Starship, catch the returning rocket in a light, natural way – some joked that it looked like two chopsticks catching a piece of steak. However, it is not as simple as it looks when one factors in that the Starship rocket has a diameter of 9 meters, is 120 m long, with upper stage being 48 m long, and carries more than 1,000 tons of propellant to power another six raptors. To be able to catch such a heavy thing like chopsticks and not cause any damage to the recyclable rocket, the two robotic arms must be both strong and accurate enough and have high buffering ability.

Despite being such a leading company, even SpaceX could not achieve the feat the first few times. The first two times the rocket exploded, the third time it lost contact and the fourth time it made a soft landing. All those failures and achievement alike gain experience. Starship is an improvement over SpaceX's own earlier recyclable model Falcon 9, as the recycled rockets can now get their tanks refilled after a quick check and be ready for the next flight again. To quote Elon Musk on X, "Starship is designed to achieve reflight of its rocket booster ultimately within an hour after liftoff."

Reportedly SpaceX has already got permission for the sixth flight, which should take off someday soon.

That's the direction Chinese commercial astronautic companies should be taking, as lowering costs will draw passengers, who will bring in the revenue and help the sector flourish.

— ZHANG ZHOUXIANG, CHINA DAILY