SpaceX celebrated the achievement of its engineers who have worked for years on technology to “catch” a first-stage Super Heavy Booster by recreating one of the 20th century’s most iconic photos, Lunch Atop a Skyscraper.
SpaceX shared the posed recreation alongside a couple of other photos earlier this week on X, formerly known as Twitter. As spotted by Digital Trends, the SpaceX team is preparing to test its booster catch for the first time during the SpaceX Starship’s upcoming fifth test flight.
SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt on Flight 5, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success pic.twitter.com/YzBUxY9c5t
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 25, 2024
Friend of PetaPixel Andrew McCarthy joked on SpaceX’s post, “Oh I didn’t realize the trick to catching it was to have a bunch of engineers ready to grab it on the mechazilla arms.” Jokes aside, if the booster catch works, it would be a boon for space flight, enabling SpaceX to reuse an integral part of its rocket ships more efficiently. Looking even farther ahead, SpaceX believes that if it can make its Starship rockets more cost-effective, it will pave the way toward ambitious Mars exploration missions.
SpaceX is not the first time the famous 1932 Lunch Atop a Skyscraper image has been revisited. Last year, a tourist attraction atop the Rockefeller Center was established to give visitors a chance to (safely) recreate the photo.
The original image, which may have been a staged publicity stunt, was named one of the 100 most influential images of all time by TIME in 2016. The magazine published a brilliant “behind the photo” video, seen below, to accompany the announcement.
“If you see the picture once, you never forget,” Rockefeller Center archivist Christine Roussel said in 2016. “This photograph, which is known around the world, shows 11 men sitting on a beam about 800 feet above the city of New York.”
Image credits: Featured image by SpaceX, based on the image, ‘Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,’ taken by an uncredited photographer in 1932.
