First attempt to catch the booster back at the launch site.
The "mechazilla" launch tower has two "chopstick" arms which are used to pick up and stack both stages and which are intended to be able to catch the returning booster and maybe also the returning Starship upper stage.
Yes. The booster has two pins that stick out at the top that are designed to hold the weight of the entire booster when empty. The plan is for the booster to return to the launch tower, position itself between the arms which will close on it and then the pins will “land” on the arms, completing the catch.
I’d say the main difference, then, is that the booster will be supported by those pins resting on top of the arms. Chopsticks use friction to hold up their load.
yes the booster’s structure is very strong vertically but not nearly as strong horizontally. There may be some “squeezing” forces from the chopsticks but this is effectively for fine positioning only. It will not support the weight. The booster will “land” by getting its pins (which stick out a bit) on the top rail of the arms.
It should be better described as having the booster land on the arms. The arms will probably be able to adjust a little to assist in alignment, but the booster is doing most of the work to be 'caught'.
How could it possibly be meant literally? Do you consider it possible for a rocket to be caught by a literal person with literal wooden sticks?
I guess I don't really understand what you are asking. There's a tower with some huge metal arms that is meant to catch the rocket. They call them chopsticks in a joking manner. Obviously, I would have thought.
Yeah I totally envisioned a person holding wooden chopsticks trying to catch a booster /s
You missed the quoted part about > which are intended to be able to catch
Which would be the unique thing to clarify. As in "something like" the "chopsticks" moving to > catch < the thing -- Like Mr. Miyagi moving the chopsticks to > catch < the thing
It allows removing the landing gears on the booster, which saves wheight, which saves fuel, which increases efficiency and reduces costs. It also avoid having to fetch the booster from wherever it would have landed.
Given that a lot of the landing failures we've seen started with a near perfect landing followed by the rocket tipping over, I suspect one benefit is that the contact point is now above the center of gravity and thus it can't really tip over.
Of course, it can't tip over unless something fails or the rocket ends up in the wrong spot (and fails to get caught) and the previous tip-overs also had to involve failures (of the landing strut, in the latest loss) or landing in some way that isn't perfectly aligned.
Their launch license requires them to initially aim at the water, and only shift to aiming at their tower if both the booster internally judges it's in perfect health, and they send the signal from their control system.
I think there is a reasonable possibility that something goes wrong enough at some point for the booster to go in the drink. But if that happens, maybe it'll be close enough to the shore that we'll get some nice video of it?
This is also standard procedure for Falcon 9 landings. They would do it this way even if the launch license didn't require it, because they know the probability of some sort of failure of the booster is high, and they don't want to destroy the launch tower if they can help it.
