Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) “Congratulations to SpaceX and Elon Musk on catching the Starship upper stage for” — TopicDigg

Congratulations to SpaceX and Elon Musk on catching the Starship upper stage for the first time on Saturday. This is the ship that launched Friday, spent nearly a full day in orbit, deployed 26 Starlink satellites, then returned from space and was caught by the tower arms. Previous catches only involved the Super Heavy booster. The ship is harder. It comes back from orbital velocity, survives reentry heat, and has to hit a precise hover so the arms can grab it. No one else has done this with an orbital-class vehicle. Full reusability of both stages is what drops the cost per flight enough to support high cadence for Starlink, lunar missions, and eventually Mars. Catching the ship after a real orbital flight turns partial recovery into a complete system. The team just showed the harder half works. That’s the step that matters most.