By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

“Imagine what government agencies could look like in 4yrs,” wrote an X employee as a caption for two images, presented side-by-side. On the left was a SpaceX Raptor engine from 2020, the mechanics of it a jumbled mess, wildly intricate, but still impressive, functional. On the right was the 2024 version of that same Raptor engine, its mechanics simple, sleek, as elegant as one could rightly imagine. More powerful, efficient.

And Elon, fresh off the maiden return of a Starship Super Heavy booster, reposted the dual image, captioned with a single word: “Yup”.

Yup https://t.co/K07j8mxx0t

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 17, 2024

“This is a custom-built tower with arms that are designed to catch the largest flying and heaviest flying object ever made and pluck it out of the air,” said Elon, pre-launch, his magnificent Starship on the launchpad, the largest and most powerful flying object ever made with more than 2x the thrust of the Saturn V moon rocket.

Elon Musk explains the Mechazilla arms

“This is a custom-built tower with arms that are designed to catch the largest flying and heaviest flying object ever made and pluck it outta the air.”
pic.twitter.com/IdNSxeMiAG

— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 14, 2024

“It’ll weigh about 250 tons. We’ll make that lighter over time,” pledged the immigrant from South Africa, now suing the state of California for limiting his ability to increase SpaceX’s launch pace for purely political reasons.

Even Democrat Governor Newsom came out in support of Elon on this one, chastising his own bureaucratic appointees, as the political winds show signs of shifting.

“You got a couple hundred tons plummeting at more than half the speed of sound. So this thing is still coming in really fast,” said Musk, his Super Heavy Booster as tall as a 19-story building. “When the engines land… it’s gonna drop the velocity to basically zero and come in between the arms,” he said, describing the landing into his Mechanzilla.

“The arms will be wide, and as it’s coming in, the arms will, will close, go flush against the side of the vehicle, and the vehicle will be descending through the arms,” said Elon, as Christine Lagarde cut rates 25 one hundredths of one percent, for the third time this year in an attempt to revive Europe’s moribund economy, admitting that she has not yet broken the neck of inflation, but believes she’s in the process of doing so. And as China pledged to print 4trln yuan ($562bln) in additional support for housing projects to try and support its slowly suffocating economy.

“Excitement guaranteed, success is possible,” said Elon, willing to embrace the uncertain outcome, the risk of televised failure. “It is important in this often difficult and troubled world for there to be things that also inspire and make you feel great to be part of humanity.”

It is important in this often difficult and troubled world for there to be things that also inspire and make you feel great to be part of humanity

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2024

Progress

“A fully and rapidly reusable rocket is barely possible. SpaceX is going to try to do it. We could fail, but we’re going to try to do it,” declared Musk in 2013. “The pivotal breakthrough that’s necessary, that some company has to come up with to make life multiplanetary, is a fully and rapidly reusable orbit-class rocket. This is a very difficult thing to do because we live on a planet where that is just barely possible. If gravity were a little lower, it would be easy. If it was a little higher, it would be impossible. It’s just a very tough engineering problem.”

“I wasn’t sure it could be solved for a while. But then, relatively recently, probably in the last twelve months or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that it can be solved,” continued Elon racing forward, pursuing his American Dream. “And I think, SpaceX is going to try to do it. Now, we could fail. I’m not saying we’re certain of success here, but we’re going to try to do it. And we have a design that, on paper, doing the calculations, doing the simulations, it does work. And now, we need to make sure that those simulations and reality agree, because generally when they don’t, reality wins.”

“The strong gravity of Earth makes the physics of a fully reusable rocket with positive payload margin extremely difficult to solve, which is why it has never been done before,” said Elon in 2014. “Removing the mass of landing legs from the booster and ship by making the tower do the work of final velocity attenuation greatly improves payload margin. This architecture also simultaneously substantially increases launch cadence, because the same arms that lift the booster and ship onto the launch stand also catch them, allowing immediate placement of the booster back on the launch stand and the ship back on top of the booster.”

ELON: A FULLY REUSABLE ROCKET IS BARELY POSSIBLE. WE’RE GOING TO TRY TO DO IT

“The pivotal breakthrough that’s necessary, that some company has to come up with to make life multiplanetary, is a fully and rapidly reusable orbit-class rocket.

This is a very difficult thing to do… pic.twitter.com/3JmuCt3EhS

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 14, 2024

“If you can move mass from the rocket to the ground site, it’s better to move mass to the ground site,” said Musk in 2021. “That’s why we took legs off the booster and just have the tower catch it. It sounds mad. I know it sounds insane. When I suggested that, people thought I lost my mind. Maybe I have,” he said, explaining the need to build Mechanzilla’s vast arms to catch his returning booster rockets, improving efficiency, lowering launch costs, one incremental improvement at a time. “It might take a few kicks at the can, but we’ll get it right.

“Achieving materially positive payload margin to a useful orbit with a fully and rapidly reusable rocket has eluded prior attempts,” said Musk on Monday. “Many have tried to embark upon this path only to give up when it became clear that their design would have negative or negligible payload margin. This is an extremely difficult problem to solve, given the strong gravity of Earth, whereas it is easy on Mars and trivial on the Moon. In the early years of SpaceX, I was not sure that success was even in the set of possible outcomes! Starship is designed to achieve a >1000X improvement over existing rocket systems and, especially after yesterday’s booster catch and precise ocean landing of the ship, I am now convinced that it can work.”

Achieving materially positive payload margin to a useful orbit with a fully & rapidly reusable rocket has eluded prior attempts. Many have tried to embark upon this path only to give up when it became clear that their design would have negative or negligible payload margin.

This… https://t.co/WOtCVLasgB

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2024

“The next generation Starlink satellites, which are so big that only Starship can launch them, will allow for a 10X increase in bandwidth and, with the reduced altitude, faster latency,” said Elon on Friday, as SpaceX requested the FCC make “several small but meaningful updates” to its 2nd-generation Starlink network.

The next generation Starlink satellites, which are so big that only Starship can launch them, will allow for a 10X increase in bandwidth and, with the reduced altitude, faster latency https://t.co/HLYdjjia3o

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2024

“Together, this modification and its companion amendment will enable the Gen2 system to deliver gigabit-speed, truly low-latency broadband and ubiquitous mobile connectivity to all Americans and the billions of people globally who still lack access to adequate broadband.”