But we still don't know if Elon's insane booster catch idea will work as planned or not. I keep thinking I hope they're keeping a spare tower or two around for, you know, just in case
They're building a second tower at Cape Canaveral right now. They're pretty committed to the idea of catching it.
I don't think the boosters could damage the tower footings or superstructure, at the speed it should be moving at when it approaches. Much like the F9 droneship landings, the boosters are on a passive ballistic trajectory during freefall that would have them impact hundreds of meters away from anything valuable. It's the final engine ignition that corrects the course to intercept with the landing zone.
I do think and engine failure during approach could result in the booster damaging the Chopstick arms, but even at free-fall from the last 500 meters, with maybe 25-50 tons of fuel onboard (each Raptor engine burns around 600kg of fuel/ox per second while running, and the Booster will land on several engines running simultaneously, perhaps 2-3 tons/sec being consumed) it's still unmixed. The oxygen splash will do horrific things to anything awaiting a chemical reaction, especially when energized by the methane present, but it won't be anything like a
Delta II explosion. The steel of the booster is far thinner and less reinforced than the steel of the tower.
