How it works

A carriage that meets the rocket halfway

The track is about 128 m tall, split into four zones. Each zone does one job, and the rocket's own hardware is limited to the hardpoints it already uses for a tower catch.

Side view of the MagCatch tower showing acceleration, match-and-capture, braking and buffer zones, with the carriage holding the vehicle at the bottom of the track — Baseline side view, to scale. Zones from top: acceleration (23 m), match and capture (15 m), braking (46 m), end buffer.

The landing sequence

The hard step is the rendezvous: the vehicle holds a steady 30 m/s while the carriage accelerates to meet it. Once the speeds match, the catch itself is gentle.

Five panels showing approach, carriage launch, match and capture, regenerative braking, and the safed vehicle

Two ways to brake, one of them needs no power

In normal operation, linear synchronous motor segments brake the carriage and return the energy to storage. If every power supply and controller fails, permanent-magnet eddy-current brakes along the lower track still stop it.

Diagram of a conductive fin moving between Halbach magnet arrays, with eddy currents producing a force opposing motion — The fins are on the carriage, which is ground hardware. Fins on the rocket would need about 320 kg of metal just to absorb the heat.

Power: sized for seconds, not hours

A catch needs about 94 MW at its peak but only about 144 MJ in total, roughly 40 kWh. A flywheel or battery buffer delivers that and recharges from a modest grid feed in minutes.

Block diagram: grid feed to storage buffer to segmented inverters, driving linear motor segments, with dump resistors and separate passive eddy brakes

Rendezvous and capture control

The guidance problem changes from "hit a fixed point" to "match a moving carriage." The arms close only inside a capture gate, proposed as within ±0.5 m/s and ±0.3 m. Outside the gate, the vehicle keeps its engines running and waves off.

Control loop: vehicle telemetry and ground sensors feed a rendezvous estimator, which commands the carriage and trims the vehicle; a capture gate closes the arms or triggers a wave-off

Want the sizing behind this?

Loads, power, capture-speed trade, mass budget and the open questions.

The numbers →