SpaceX just announced to CANCEL Starship Flight 10 Tower CATCH, Here's why...

SpaceX just announced to CANCEL Starship Flight 10 Tower CATCH, Here's why...
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SpaceX just announced to CANCEL Starship Flight 10 Tower CATCH, Here's why...
Catching a Super Heavy booster with the launch tower, it’s one of the boldest and most impressive moves SpaceX has ever pulled off.
And after nearly half a year since the last attempt in Flight 8, the space community has been eagerly waiting to witness that wonderful moment again in the upcoming Starship Flight 10.
However, in fact, there won’t be any catch attempt this time, because SpaceX has officially changed the plan for the mission.
So, why did SpaceX make this unexpected decision?
Let’s find out in today’s episode of Alpha Tech.
SpaceX just announced to CANCEL Starship Flight 10 Tower CATCH, Here's why...
Recently, an internal source revealed that SpaceX won’t be attempting a tower catch for Super Heavy Booster 16 during Starship Flight 10 later this month.
Instead, the booster will perform a soft splashdown, with a high risk of exploding on impact, in the Gulf, similar to what was originally planned for Booster 14, which flew for the second time in Flight 9.
Now, that might sound expensive, and it kind of goes against the company’s core philosophy of optimizing costs. Because unlike Booster 14, which was flown again to test and prove the concept of reusability, Booster 16 is a completely brand-new vehicle.
Its estimated production cost? Around $63 million. And nearly half of that comes from the 33 Raptor engines alone, by far the most valuable part of the rocket.
SpaceX just announced to CANCEL Starship Flight 10 Tower CATCH, Here's why...
With a brand-new booster in hand, SpaceX could’ve easily gone for another dramatic tower catch with Mechazilla , especially since they’ve already pulled it off twice in a row during Flights 7 and 8.
So here’s the big question: If SpaceX is willing to sacrifice an entirely new vehicle, what kind of data are they hoping to get in return?
Well, to answer that, we need to look at the bigger picture.
For any company, the early stages of testing are extremely expensive, and sometimes the data they get doesn’t quite match the money they’ve poured in. But that’s the price of progress. Spending tens of millions of dollars just to gain a small amount of experience, even if it only improves the rocket by 1%, is often worth it. Because spaceflight has never been cheap. What really matters is efficiency, and pushing it higher with every flight.
And that philosophy seems to be exactly what’s behind SpaceX’s latest decision.
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