Don't Panic. Catch the Ship.
Yesterday SpaceX did something nobody had done before. It brought a Starship upper stage home from orbit and let the launch tower catch it out of the air with its "chopstick" arms. The ship was Ship 42, painted with the words DON'T PANIC. Now it's your turn to fly it home: deorbit, reentry, bellyflop, flip and catch.
Mission setup
The seed sets the wind, the offset and Starbase's position. Share a seed and a friend gets exactly the same flight.
Keyboard: ◀ ▶ steer / pick · ▲ ▼ lift (reentry) · Space burn / flip / hold to throttle · P pause. Touch: on-screen buttons.
Your Flight Card
The share link carries your card. Whoever opens it sees your result and can fly the exact same seed.
How a ship comes home
1 · Deorbit
After about 14 orbits at roughly 275 km, the ship fires its engines against its direction of travel. That small burn lowers the far side of the orbit into the atmosphere. Fire too early and you land short, too late and you land long. In the game a steeper burn means a shorter, hotter entry.
2 · Reentry
Starship hits the air belly-first, protected by about 18,000 hexagonal heat-shield tiles rated to around 1,400 °C. Banking the lift vector up or down trades heat for range. The game's model uses a real exponential atmosphere and lift and drag equations, simplified and sped up.
3 · Bellyflop & flip
Below the speed of sound the ship falls sideways like a skydiver, steering with four flaps. Close to the ground it relights its sea-level Raptors and swings upright. Start the flip too early and you waste propellant. Start it too late and you don't stop in time.
4 · The catch
No landing legs. The tower, nicknamed Mechazilla, closes two arms around the hovering ship, and small catch pins near the top settle onto them. Come in slow, centred, upright and not drifting, or it won't hold.