Anand Mahindra Cheers SpaceX’s Super Heavy Booster Catch: 'Where Can I Buy My Ticket?'

Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra has given a shout-out to Elon Musk and SpaceX after the aeronautics company conducted a test flight of Starship, a 233-feet booster, which, upon its return, was captured by its ‘Mechazilla’ mechanical arms in Boca Chica, Texas.

Mahindra posted a congratulatory message for Musk on X (formerly Twitter) and shared a video of the Starship’s lower half returning to the launch pad.

“This Sunday, I’m happy to be a couch potato if it means that I get to watch history being made. This experiment may just be the critical moment when space travel was democratised and made routine,” he said.

“Where can I buy my ticket?” the businessman asked the Tesla CEO in jest.

On October 13, 2024, the Super Heavy booster lifted off at 8:25 AM local time, propelling the Starship’s second stage into space. The booster began a descent back to Earth when the spacecraft achieved an altitude of approximately 70 kilometres (around 43 miles). To slow its return, it fired up three of its 33 Raptor engines and aimed for a soft landing back at the launch site.

Musk posted on X in celebration of the fact that the unique launch was a success saying, “The tower has caught the rocket!!” he wrote.

The specific goal of this flight was to show the ability to recover the launching booster with a mechanical arm located at the launch pad named ‘Mechazilla’ or ‘chopsticks’.

While SpaceX has had earlier successes with Falcon 9 rockets for reusable launches, landing legs and drone ships, this is the most ambitious reusability strategy because it catches launchers mid-air.

The flight computer of the booster was designed to steer the stage towards a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico in the event that the rocket or the launch pad capture gear experienced any issues.