SpaceX SHOCKED NASA and China with a Genius Landing Way to the Moon without Leg!

"SpaceX SHOCKED NASA and China with a Genius Landing Way to the Moon without Leg!
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#techmap #spacex #starship #spacexlive
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Intro 0:00
Side-mounted Raptor engines 0:35
Trade-offs 5:38
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1) SOURCES OF THUMBNAIL:
2) SOURCES OF VIDEO AND IMAGES:
Erc X: https://twitter.com/ErcXspace
ErcX Space https://www.youtube.com/c/ErcXSpace/
Evan Karen: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDN1X8Fz1oAXX-rBcOWjzmg

Spacex 3D Creation Eccentric: https://t.co/QGbEwDwv7j

https://monte-negro.org/Rosas-Lunar-Base-Design
SpaceXvision: https://www.youtube.com/c/SpaceXvision
Alexander Svan: https://twitter.com/AlexSvanArt
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFtAc_KRuj4mrr0bVMZMn2w
TijnM : https://twitter.com/m_tijn
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDA8yz_nQY-0Uxd96-qxYjA
SLS (Space Launch System): https://x.com/ScottLikedSLS
C-bass Productions: https://www.youtube.com/c/CbassProductions
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SpaceX SHOCKED NASA and China with a Genius Landing Way to the Moon without Leg!
What if the next generation of rockets didn’t land upright at all?
Imagine a Starship diving through the thin Martian sky — then flipping sideways, firing engines from its sides, and touching down like a massive steel airplane.
It sounds insane, right? But believe it or not, this wild idea — side-mounted engines and horizontal landings — has been seriously discussed inside the space community.
The question is: could it actually work? Or would it break every rule of rocket engineering we know?
Find out everything in today's Techmap episode!
SpaceX SHOCKED NASA and China with a Genius Landing Way to the Moon without Leg!
Have you ever wondered why Elon Musk has such a big issue with landing legs? Simple — they add weight, they complicate the design, and they create more points of failure. But here’s the thing: without landing legs, a rocket has nothing to steady itself on touchdown — it would just topple over. So, at first glance, legs seem absolutely necessary.
But Musk? He doesn’t think inside that kind of box. When everyone else saw legs as the only way, he went full “outside the box” and came up with something wild — a massive steel tower with two robotic arms that literally catch the booster out of the sky. That’s right: Mechazilla.
Now, that’s an awesome solution for launches on Earth, but it immediately sparks a bigger question — could we ever pull something like that off on the Moon or Mars?
Let’s strip this problem down to first principles — how should Starship land on other worlds if legs aren’t an option?
SpaceX SHOCKED NASA and China with a Genius Landing Way to the Moon without Leg!
Back in the early days of Starship’s development, Musk actually pitched a radical idea: instead of traditional legs, why not use the ship’s own body as a landing surface? The concept was for Starship to descend vertically and then gently tip over just before touchdown — using a deployable composite landing pad to distribute the force and keep things stable.
SpaceX even included this concept in their proposal for NASA’s Human Landing System. But NASA wasn’t exactly sold on it — they wanted the safer, more familiar option of vertical landings with legs, especially for crewed missions.
Still, that wild horizontal-landing idea stuck around — and it kind of blew up online. The space community ran with it, brainstorming all kinds of creative versions. One viral clip even showed a Starship with four side-mounted Raptor engines, designed to let it shift orientations mid-descent for a smooth horizontal landing."