Pretend I know absolutely nothing about these space things beyond whatever I read on Manifold (it's true):

Is there any provision to land one of these things as a "landing" instead of a "catch"? If so, is there a market about whether they will "land" one before they "catch" one?

@Eliza My understanding is that they weren't given landing legs, to save on weight. So it's chopsticks or bust.

@MichaelWheatley Thanks for the insight! That sounds absolutely terrifying for whoever wants to go for a ride inside one.

@Eliza should point out that these Starships are very far from being human-rated. It would indeed be reasonable to suspect that a crewed version will have back-up legs and even a (desperate) water landing option

@JoshuaWilkes An ejectable crew compartment, maybe, but landing legs would be a big ask.

@Eliza This is a similar market to what you're asking for: /Mqrius/will-starship-land-on-legs-on-earth

I'll also add to the above discussion that they are intending to use landing legs to land on the Moon and Mars (given the obvious lack of catch towers at the landing sites) but there's no currently stated plans to ever use landing legs on Earth. Even the moon and mars starships which have legs will likely never land on Earth, instead docking with other Starships or Orion to return the crew to Earth, while the moon/mars starship remains in orbit for the next trip.

@MichaelWheatley With the disclaimer that we just don't know:

I think fundamentally NASA wouldn't fly astronauts on a vehicle that had no viable abort modes apart from landing on specially designed pads. You could get away with crew ejection like the shuttle did for test flights, but after that presumably you run into the same trouble that the shuttle did of trying to get crew out of lower decks and so on. I think it's less likely than adding legs which SpaceX has already demonstrated work

NASA didn't like the RTLS abort modes for the shuttle, and they would anyway become unavailable long before launch was over. You could I suppose build a catch tower on the other side of the Atlantic?

Just to clarify, you're talking specifically about the starship/2nd stage here?

@MattP as the description says, yes

Writing this shortly after the IFT-5 flight in 2024:

I think YES. I think SpaceX will sequentially achieve goals towards a Mars shot in this order:

1. Booster reuse (most risk retired with the catch)

2. Ship reuse (preceded by catch, this market)

3. Ship refueling

4. Lunar orbit insertion (for Artemis, but also a test run for navigation and guidance, beyond earth orbit comms, etc)

5. Lunar landing (maybe on same mission as 4)

6. Mars landing.

Trying to land the ship is risky, but it's next on the list. They need to move fast to get through the whole list, so I don't think they're going to hesitate to try it.

I expect flight 6 or 7 will make a landing attempt, in first half of 2025. That gives them the second half to try again if the first attempt fails.

8 out 10 chance seems about right, at this time.

[Edit: fix spelling]