‘Can I buy ticket?’: Anand Mahindra’s message to Elon Musk on SpaceX’s rocket catch

Anand Mahindra, chairman of the Mahindra Group, took to X, to congratulate Musk.

The industrialist wrote a message to the SpaceX CEO while sharing a video of the Starship’s lower half returning to the launch pad. “This Sunday, I’m happy to be a couch potato if it means that I get to watch history being made. This experiment may just be the critical moment when space travel was democratised and made routine,” he said.

On a playful note, the industrialist asked the Tesla CEO, “Where can I buy my ticket?”

Take a look at his post here:

The groundbreaking achievement is even more impressive as the SpaceX’s Starship, along with its Super Heavy booster, is the largest and most powerful rocket in the world, standing 400 feet tall.

The rocket, which launched from the Boca Chica in Texas facility, separated from the “Super Heavy” booster at an altitude of about 70 kilometers, sending the Starship second-stage rocket toward space. The Super Heavy booster then re-lit three of its 33 Raptor engines to slowly return to the launch pad it had just departed from.

In an extraordinary engineering feat, the returning booster was quickly caught by the launch tower’s mechanical arms, which grabbed it using small bars beneath its grid fins.

Elon Musk posted on X celebrating the success of the unique launch, “The tower has caught the rocket!!” This successful catch marks a significant step forward in reusable rocket technology,” he wrote. (Also read: Sundar Pichai congratulates Elon Musk for Starship rocket feat: ‘Have to admit…’)