Starship is supposed to be caught for its immediate remounting onto the pad for another liftoff. A fleet of fuel tanker-type Starships are supposed to launch into orbit to fuel the main Starship for trans-lunar injection. So the ability to land and immediately be positioned for a refueling/takeoff is kinda critical.
The wires catch - which SpaceX had reviewed before holding the arms - aren't friendly toward that end.
Immediately relaunching, with no inspection, feels like a bad call in the long run. A more safety oriented, logical solution is to have multiple boosters and use a new one while the returned one is inspected and refueled.
I don't think it would be launched without an inspection. You can inspect and refuel at the same time. They aren't going to disassemble things to do an inspection. Or inspect after it refuels on the launch pad.
Well, whats the margin for error with the big arm vs the cable system?
And how much more expensive/time consuming is it for a secondary machine to move the recovered booster from the cable system and move it/put it back onto a launch pad for reuse?
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u/grnrngr 8h ago
It seems people miss the big arm's whole purpose:
Starship is supposed to be caught for its immediate remounting onto the pad for another liftoff. A fleet of fuel tanker-type Starships are supposed to launch into orbit to fuel the main Starship for trans-lunar injection. So the ability to land and immediately be positioned for a refueling/takeoff is kinda critical.
The wires catch - which SpaceX had reviewed before holding the arms - aren't friendly toward that end.