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SpaceX's Big Catch: What's the Plan?

Starbase, USAMonday, October 28, 2024
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SpaceX just did something amazing – they caught a huge rocket with robotic arms! This isn't just a cool stunt; it's a big step towards their goal of making space travel cheap, quick, and reliable. The idea is to reuse rockets really fast. Instead of taking days to move a landed rocket back to the launch site, these robotic arms can grab it and set it back up in hours. This could mean launching a rocket, catching it, refueling it, and sending it back up again all in the same day! Some people think this is a bad idea because it takes a lot of trips to refuel a rocket in space. But that's only if you think launching rockets is always going to be expensive and slow. If SpaceX can launch dozens of rockets a week, suddenly it doesn't seem so bad. Plus, this way, rockets don't need big, heavy landing legs, which saves a lot of weight and time. This recent catch at their Starbase in South Texas shows that SpaceX is making progress. They're getting closer to a future where we can easily send rockets to the Moon or even Mars. It's a big change from how we used to think about space travel.

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