SpaceX catches the Starship tower — and AlphaFold redesigns gene-editing proteins

Two clean wins today. SpaceX caught the tower arms on the 13th Starship flight, the first successful tower catch. The 90-meter arms — the "chopsticks" — clamped the booster as it fell back. It's the third time they tried, and the second time it worked. The chopsticks are simple: a pair of 30-meter arms on the launch tower that grab the booster by its landing legs. It matters because catching the booster lets you fly it again, which is the whole point of Starship. The booster is the expensive part, and the chopsticks make reusing it possible without a separate landing leg system.

AlphaFold — the DeepMind protein-folding model — has redesigned the gene-editing protein Cas9 to make it safer. AlphaFold predicted the 3D shape of the protein, engineers used that to swap in mutations, and the redesigned version cuts DNA at the target with less off-target snipping. The work shows AlphaFold doing more than prediction: it's being used as a design tool. AlphaFold is now part of the lab bench, not just the research shelf.

Why this matters for us: the first is about cheap, reliable launch — the kind of infrastructure that lets the next wave of companies launch without begging for slots. The second is about using AI to design things in the real world, not just generate text. These are the quiet wins that compound.