So far all full stack Starship launches have launched from pad A, and all booster catches have been performed by tower A. But construction at the nearby Pad B continues and Ryan Hansen has recently speculated that the first ship catch attempt could involve a launch and booster catch at Pad A, but a ship catch using tower B (see the following twitter thread for his reasoning)
This question resolves based on the first official flight plan that SpaceX releases featuring a ship catch and is not concerned with any flight outcomes.
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@ChristopherRandles My understanding of what Ryan Hansen is proposing is that the chopsticks on Tower A aren't compatible with the ship catch pins that we've seen so far.
Hence the main prediction is specifically that the first Starship catch will be on Tower B. A launch from Pad A and booster catch on Tower A are further speculation with their own reasoning.
And though I agree requiring all three criteria is a very specific plan and a very strict resolution criteria, the reasoning Ryan gave seemed sound enough that I thought it would make an interesting market!
(Definitely open to feedback though, I very nearly used a more relaxed criteria when first making the market)
@Nat If you have thought about it and it says what you want then that is fine.
While I would agree that it is likely that if a ship catch is attempted in next couple of months then it seems likely to use tower B at Boca Chica to catch the ship.
However we are not sure that it will be that soon. If flight 8 ship does not survive due to re-entry heating on area below catch pins then there could be redesigns and a much longer period. Redesign could have various effects on which tower to catch which stage. Perhaps even first catch attempt at Cape Canaveral if route over Mexico isn't ideal?
I am thinking they could easily end up doing: ship to orbit, full deorbit burn to targeted splashdown. Then next launch to orbit catches booster on pad A, remove booster to megabay area then do deorbit burn and catch on pad A to avoid risking pad B than can only launch booster v2. This probably requires deorbit burn at least 24 hours after ascent burn and I am not sure whether/how problematic that is. Catch after single orbit also has issues.
Not sure about there being a compatibility issues of ship pins to tower A. So seems a range of issues here.
@ChristopherRandles yeah I definitely think something like that is possible. And also definitely agree that the more tries it takes to get ready for the first catch attempt, the more likely it is that something will be different to the speculated plan. Was initially considering the market being conditional on a catch attempt by flight 9 or 10 for that reason (but decided against it because conditional markets kinda suck).
But ultimately, the idea of the market was to follow whether this specific speculation turns out to be right so I'd might as well stick with the criteria as written.
Definitely interesting hearing your thinking though, will be curious to see how you end up betting!