The Principle Lab

Author: The Principle Lab From Ocean Recovery to Tower Catch — How SpaceX Brings Boosters Back If you only see quick clips on social media, booster recovery can look like magic. One video shows spray kicking up in the ocean, another shows a rocket standing on a ship, and newer tests show a giant tower trying to grab a stage out of the air. It is easy to wonder whether someone is literally fishing Starship out of the sea. This piece walks through how SpaceX actually handles its boosters today: early ocean splashdowns, Falcon 9-style reusability with pads and drone ships, and the new tower catch experiments for Super Heavy. Along the way we will clear up the most common confusion point: what you are really looking at when a clip seems to show a booster being dragged out of the water. Quick summary if you just want the gist Here is the short version in one screen: early Starship ...

Author: The Principle Lab How Big the Starship Booster Really Is and How Long Refurbishing Takes If you watched the recent test where SpaceX's tower arms caught the returning stage, it probably did not feel like a small booster at all. You were looking at a first stage that is closer to a skyscraper than to a model rocket, and that scale is exactly why people keep asking how on Earth it can ever be reused. This piece sticks to the engineering side: how big the Super Heavy booster actually is in numbers, how it fits into the full Starship stack, and what refurbishment means in practice for a reusable booster. No launch prices, no business forecasts — just hardware, physics, and operations. Quick summary if you only have a minute Here is the short version before we zoom in on the details. If you just want to know what you are looking at when that booster swings back into the l...

Author: The Principle Lab Why SpaceX Catches the Starship Booster Instead of Just Landing It If you have watched Falcon 9 stick those pinpoint landings, it is natural to think, “So why not just do the same thing with Starship?” You see a tall stainless-steel booster coming back toward the pad and your brain fills in the rest: add bigger legs, reuse it, done. The reality is a bit stranger and a lot more engineering-driven. Starship’s Super Heavy booster is built for full and rapid reusability , not just survival, and SpaceX’s own description of the system explicitly talks about returning both stages to the launch site to be caught by the ground infrastructure instead of resting on their own legs. That design choice ripples through mass, cost, turnaround time, and even how NASA plans to use Starship for Artemis missions. Quick summary if you are scrolling on the bus Here is the s...

Author: The Principle Lab How SpaceX Catches the Starship Booster — And Why Some Attempts Are Aborted If you watched Starship’s recent test flights, you probably saw the huge Super Heavy booster diving back toward the same launch tower that lit it up minutes earlier. Then, almost casually, two giant arms reached out and grabbed a rocket stage taller than many office buildings. It looks wild on video, and, you know, it raises a very reasonable question: how do you “catch” something that heavy without breaking everything? This guide walks through the basic problem SpaceX is solving here, how the Mechazilla tower actually catches the booster, why some attempts are intentionally aborted, and what all of that means for rapid reuse in the next few years. Quick summary if you are in a hurry Here is the short version, before we go step by step: The Super Heavy booster does not j...