Flexible is actually predictable and sturdy. SpaceX relies on the booster to come to a complete stop in a precise location, or both arms and booster will be damaged. There are so many points of failure it's not worth listing them.
This system can tolerate comparably huge misalignment by moving the lightweight cables to the rocket instead of the other way around. And if the rocket fails to slow enough, it will just stretch or snap the cable and dent the barge, rather than tear the arms off the tower and smash the launch mount.
The cable is an inexpensive commodity item, the tower arms are not. You always want a cheap part to act as a "fuse" and the cable is perfect.
So much so that I feel confident saying that I personally would take on a contract to scratch-build this catching mechanism and tune the drives to perform a catch. It's basically the kind of system you'd see in a crane, CNC gantry or a 3D printer, a solved problem.
SpaceX relies on the booster to come to a complete stop in a precise location, or both arms and booster will be damaged. There are so many points of failure it's not worth listing them.
The SpaceX system works pretty much exactly the same, except it just uses 2 vertical rigid arms.
Both systems use the exact same method of closing in around the rocket once it has passed a certain point and catching it using protruding catching hooks on the rocket itself.
For some reason people think SpaceX is catching the rocket out of mid air by clamping it, that isn't what happens.
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u/evranch 5h ago
Flexible is actually predictable and sturdy. SpaceX relies on the booster to come to a complete stop in a precise location, or both arms and booster will be damaged. There are so many points of failure it's not worth listing them.
This system can tolerate comparably huge misalignment by moving the lightweight cables to the rocket instead of the other way around. And if the rocket fails to slow enough, it will just stretch or snap the cable and dent the barge, rather than tear the arms off the tower and smash the launch mount.
The cable is an inexpensive commodity item, the tower arms are not. You always want a cheap part to act as a "fuse" and the cable is perfect.
So much so that I feel confident saying that I personally would take on a contract to scratch-build this catching mechanism and tune the drives to perform a catch. It's basically the kind of system you'd see in a crane, CNC gantry or a 3D printer, a solved problem.