SpaceX Swaps Starship's Landing Gear for 'Chopsticks' - But Why?

SpaceX made headlines when it successfully caught the Starship's Super Heavy booster in 'chopstick' arms. The chopstick-like appendages grabbed the rocket's 29 Raptor V2 engines and pinned it down firmly to the ground. However, the decision to make the shift from landing legs doesn't entirely rest on making the system simpler and cheaper. Chopsticks allow the system to lift more massive loads and give it more versatility. A landing leg consists of an 11-meter-high, heavy-duty leg, a crush core, and a state-of-the-art hydraulic damper-driven piston - or actuator, and a 74-ton hydraulic cylinder for each of four legs. On the other hand, each of its chopsticks contains a 28-ton hydraulic cylinder, electric and fiber-optic communications networking, electric linear actuation, and grid fins to accommodate it and enable its hold after the process of capture is done. Elongated grid fins on the capture fingers mean that the device could easily capture and release Falcon 9 boosters and Falcon Heavy center core from Orbit in the Atlantic Ocean. A catch in the ocean could call for much bigger machine learning computer and tougher safety and so Starship will switch over. Starship is set to be a significantly bigger spacecraft than F9, and its reusability would make it far more crucial. Its Super Heavy as a first-stage drive and boost rocket would need more powerful hydraulics and computers. Instead, though the chopstick appendages run based on the same design, it would scale up well enough to manage a much bigger rocket and are also cost-effective.