Elon Musk explains how SpaceX catches 250-ton rockets mid-air. 🤯

This is Elon Musk explaining the catch before anyone had tried it. A tower with two arms, grabbing a booster out of the air as it comes down. He's walking through the sequence, and he's clearly not confident. His words: success is one of the possible outcomes, the probability is uncertain, but it is above zero. What he's describing is genuinely hard. The booster weighs around 250 tons and comes down near the speed of sound. It has to brake, cancel out its sideways error, bring its velocity to roughly zero, and slide between two arms that close around it mid-descent. Small nubs on the side catch the top of the arms. His phrasing for the failure case: hopefully not shear off and crumple. It worked on the first attempt. October 13, 2024, Flight 5, about seven minutes after liftoff, the arms closed around Booster 12. The success appeared to surprise people inside SpaceX too. Since then they've caught the booster three times in four attempts. Recent flights have put boosters in the Gulf instead while they test newer hardware. This July, Musk said a ship landing had been accurate enough that the tower could have caught it, so the upper stage is next. The hedge was honest. It still worked first try. Follow @HyperbolicAI for more content on AI and technology. Media: Everyday Astronaut #spacex #elonmusk #starship #space #engineering