Elon Musk's Insane Starship Booster Landing Method Shocked NASA: Droneship!

Elon Musk's Insane Starship Booster Landing Method Shocked NASA: Droneship!
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Elon Musk's Insane Starship Booster Landing Method Shocked NASA: Droneship!
Blue Origin just nailed a stunning New Glenn booster landing on Jacklyn, so impressive that even Elon Musk couldn’t help but praise it. But here’s the twist: SpaceX is already working on something even crazier. Not just landing Super Heavy at sea, but landing Starship itself on a droneship. No tower, no chopsticks, just raw engine control. And honestly? That’s on a whole different level.
So what does that plan actually look like? And why is it even more impressive than what Blue Origin just did? Let’s dive into today’s episode of Alpha Tech.
Elon Musk's Insane Starship Booster Landing Method Shocked NASA: Droneship!
In July 2021, when SpaceX unveiled a brand-new droneship named A Shortfall of Gravitas at Port Canaveral, Florida, Elon Musk tweeted with excitement: "Version 3 of the SpaceX droneship. Team did great work! Will be epic to see the deep sea oil rigs converted to ocean spaceports for Starship."
His words weren’t just praising the engineering achievement, they also hinted at a much bigger ambition: safely landing the massive, fully reusable Starship on mobile sea platforms, rather than risking fixed landing pads on land. It made sense. By then, SpaceX had been consistently landing Falcon 9 boosters on droneships, so it was only natural that this success would influence Starship’s plans.
Elon Musk's Insane Starship Booster Landing Method Shocked NASA: Droneship!
To make it happen, Musk had acquired two old oil rigs, renamed Phobos and Deimos. One was intended for Super Heavy, the other for Starship itself, transforming them into giant, floating “spaceports” that could move to catch test flights from Boca Chica.
Still, at that moment, SpaceX was pouring all its resources into Starship development. Budgets were tight, the team was stretched thin across simultaneous tests, from Raptor engines to full system integration, and retrofitting two massive oil rigs would cost tens of millions and consume huge amounts of time. Meanwhile, as Starship grew ever more powerful, the rigs’ limitations became clear: small deck space, weak impact resistance, and challenges in installing precise landing systems for “hot” touchdowns at hundreds of kilometers per hour. They simply weren’t up to the task for a fully reusable system.
That’s why SpaceX shifted focus to catching boosters directly with the giant Mechazilla arms on the launch tower. The rigs were temporarily set aside in favor of more practical approaches like ocean landings, while the tower-based catch system became the priority. But hey, that doesn’t mean landing Starship on droneships was completely abandoned, SpaceX still keeps it as a backup.
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