The Steam Launcher

We saw the plans for hundreds of starship launches per year. We calculated how much power was being released in the first couple of seconds and then asked ourselves how much could be used to power a steam catapult. It was more than enough to lift the rocket. We put the whole thing together and sent it to one of the people we knew who worked on the team and before you know it, the launch center was being retrofitted to have our idea boosting the rocket over a hundred miles an hour faster at liftoff.

The geniuses at SpaceX captured the steam generated and used it to power the whole town before being recondensed and used for the next launch. There is so much excess power that companies are moving in and setting up to take advantage of it. When they built the new capture and catapult system, the noise level was cut in half. It goes way up once it leaves the tower but by then it is moving so fast that it drops away as it gets further.

The results are so dramatic that every new rocket facility includes steam launch systems and most existing ones are retrofitting them as quickly as they can. It seems like an obvious option once you look at it and I am glad they made it work.