Like many people this weekend, I couldn’t tear myself away from videos of the booster rocket of Elon Musk’s Starship shrieking back to earth, to be clutched in the giant ‘chopstick’ arms of a towering metallic cradle. I must have watched it now about 50 times from varying angles. The most impressive are the videos recorded at a distance on ordinary phones. The thing thunders down like a missile launch on a strip of film run backwards, and there’s a tantalising moment at the very end where you think it’s going to miss. Then it rights itself with a neat little manoeuvre, like an Edwardian gent straightening his cravat before he steps into his club.
Starship rocket booster caught by tower pic.twitter.com/aOQmSkt6YE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2024
I haven’t ever felt this moved by a tech event before. The big achievements of technology have been for most of my life small, interior, or of dubious worth.
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