(cheerful music)
(audience cheering) - [Narrator] It was one of
the most remarkable displays of engineering prowess in recent memory. On October 13th, SpaceX made history when the booster from its massive Starship rocket

was caught by two mechanical
arms dubbed, Chopsticks, as it descended back to the launch pad. (Super Heavy swooshing)
(audience cheering) - My first impression of
Flight Test Five was, holy, and maybe I'll end it there.

- [Narrator] Plaudits soon rolled in. - Wow. They did it. - I mean, it's science fiction. - China hasn't done it.
Russia hasn't done it. - [Narrator] Even President-elect,
Donald Trump weighed in.

- And it wrapped those arms
around it and it held it, and just like you hold your baby at night. - [Narrator] Now, with
Starship's next flight test just days away and SpaceX increasingly
dominating the competition,

here's why Starship is so
important for the company and what the next flight could
mean for the rocket's future. Starship is a mammoth two-stage vehicle that stands at a height
of almost 400 feet, making it the tallest rocket ever made.

The Starship spacecraft
is the uppermost part that's designed to carry a crew
of astronauts or satellites. It sits atop a booster
rocket called Super Heavy, that is responsible for Starship's launch and initial ascent. - You know, SpaceX wants to use Starship

for a lot of different types of missions for Starlink satellite launches, but also for moon missions,
for sending people to Mars, the latter of course, being
Musk's longtime dream. - [Narrator] CEO, Elon Musk, wants Starship to
revolutionize space flight.

Core to that vision is
the idea of reusability. - Reusability is the key
to a great future in space. It's essential. We need
reusability for the rocket. It's just like we have
reusability for cars,

for airplanes, for bicycles, for horses. - Reusability has been
baked in to Starship from the very beginning because you need reusability to both, quickly and cost effectively
launch a ton of stuff, of mass,

of cargo, future humans into space for all kinds of different missions. - [Narrator] To accomplish this, SpaceX plans to eventually
capture the Starship spacecraft, the top part of the vehicle
and reuse it as well. - The idea is to, like, narrow,

is to, like, make rocket transportation, rocket launching like more like that and less this super unique event that requires hardware that you use once and don't use again. - [Crowd] Two, one. Go!
(crowd cheering) - [Narrator] Catching the booster

was the primary goal of
October's flight test, and SpaceX succeeded on its first attempt. Propelled by 33 massive Raptor engines, Starship took off from its
launchpad in South Texas. After ascending to an altitude of about 43 miles above Earth,

Starship Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship rocket. - [Announcer] Rock Stage. Separation confirmed. - [Narrator] The booster
then flipped around and fired its Raptor engines
to return to the launch site.

(audience cheering) - [Announcer] Booster coming
in hot or booster catch. - [Narrator] As the booster
approached the launchpad, it slowed to a near hover and did a horizontal slide maneuver before being caught by
two massive chopstick arms

on the launch tower dubbed, Mechazilla. Meanwhile, the Starship spacecraft continued flying on its own using its six onboard engines to travel 132 miles above Earth before descending back
down through the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX's successful catch
of its Starship booster was a major achievement for the company and an engineering feat that showed how SpaceX is pushing the
envelope on rocket technology. - When you think of a rocket, most of the rocket is the booster.

You need a lot of power to defeat gravity and get off of Earth and
like send something into space. For decades, the most efficient way and safest way to do that
companies, governments found, was to build boosters that
were used a single time.

Boosters would fly back in and into Earth and, you know, crash down in the ocean and that would be the end of them. - [Narrator] SpaceX has
already demonstrated the power of reusable boosters
with its Falcon vehicles.

Rivals are pushing to add reusable systems to their rockets too, and closely watching the company's work on Starship. Flight Test Five, featuring this catch, was kind of a shot over the bow because it showed that SpaceX very much has a path to making Starship real.

making it operational, bringing it to the market, potentially changing, assuming it all goes forward, the ability to get to space and how you get to space and what it costs to do that. - [Narrator] Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin

is developing a reusable booster for its new Glenn Rocket that is slated to launch for the first time this month. United Launch Alliance, the rocket operator owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is looking to recover the two engines that help power

the first part of its new rocket, Vulcan Centaur. Last year, Rocket Lab USA used an engine that had flown before on a flight of its Electron rocket and is working on a new vehicle called Neutron with a booster that it could use again.

SpaceX's progress has prompted interest in reusable boosters overseas as well. A Chinese company said it is planning test flights for new reusable rockets in the next couple of years, and Russia recently said that it was beginning to develop its own reusable rocket.

But when it comes to reusability, SpaceX remains far ahead of the competition. - It's not that it's like free to sort of like reuse a booster. It comes back, you have to refurbish it, you have to do checks,

you have to make sure it's
like safe to fly again. But they've demonstrated that these boosters can be
used time and time again and that really helps
SpaceX, like, keep costs low and that helps them generate more money

and that's money they can use like elsewhere in their business, namely for Starship right now. - [Narrator] While Musk's
busy wielding his influence in the incoming Trump administration, his rocket company is forging ahead. SpaceX plans to conduct

a sixth Starship test
flight in mid-November. - The November 18th flight test is, according to how the
company's described it, going to be fairly similar to
like the most recent one. So the company will try to
catch the booster again.

It's going to be examining, you
know, heat shield performance, again working on relighting a
Raptor engine while in space. I don't think we're going to
see a major new first time sort of engineering kind of
moment the way, you know,

we saw with the fifth flight test, although like, you know, we also probably shouldn't
take for granted. Just like catching the booster, they're going to want to
show that they can do it again and again and again. - [Narrator] Recently,
SpaceX shared a picture

of the Starship that will
be used in Flight Test Six. Attached to its side
is a piece of artwork, a smiling cartoon
banana holding a banana, an apparent reference to
the 'banana for scale' joke that engineers often make. In the near term,

SpaceX says it wants Starship
to deploy satellites. NASA also wants to use a Starship variant as part of its Artemis program, which aims to return
humans to the moon in 2026. Ultimately, Musk says he wants
Starship to make humanity

multi-planetary by making long
haul trips to Mars and back. - Eventually, history suggests that there will
be some doomsday event. The alternative is to become
a spacefaring civilization and a multi-planet species,
which I hope you would agree,

that is the right way to go. Yes? (audience cheering) (cheerful music)

SpaceX Caught a Rocket With ‘Chopsticks.’ What Will Musk Try Next? | WSJ

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SpaceX Caught a Rocket With ‘Chopsticks.’ What Will Musk Try Next? | WSJ

SpaceX Caught a Rocket With ‘Chopsticks.’ What Will Musk Try Next? | WSJ

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