In a historic feat of aerospace engineering, SpaceX successfully caught its Starship’s booster using metal “chopsticks” at its Texas launch pad on Sunday. The booster’s return is a milestone for the company and the US’ broader space aspirations, which aims to use a reusable Starship to send people to the moon and Mars.

“Science fiction without the fiction part” is how SpaceX CEO Elon Musk described the milestone, which other SpaceX employees called “magic” and “a day for the engineering history books.”

Sunday’s launch was the fifth test flight for Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket in the world. It stands almost 400 feet tall (taller than the Statue of Liberty), consisting of the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft stacked on top of one another.

The flight couldn’t have gone more smoothly:

• At an altitude of ~40 miles, the Super Heavy booster detached from Starship and began its descent to Earth, while Starship continued its voyage before making a controlled splash landing in the Indian Ocean.
• On its descent, the booster used four fins to steer itself right into the waiting arms of two “chopsticks,” which gave it a bearhug similar to the one you’d get from a friend after a long journey.

A one-take wonder: This was the first time SpaceX attempted to catch the booster back at the launch tower.

Why reusability matters

Before SpaceX came along, most rocket operators used expendable boosters that, like a bridesmaid dress, can only be used once. But Musk has long believed that reusable rockets are the future, since they dramatically lower costs and can theoretically be sent up to space again quickly after completing a mission.

Big picture: Starship is key to NASA’s ambitions, because it’s banking on using it to land humans on the moon for the first time since the 1970s. Musk has even grander plans for Starship: He wants the rocket to take humans to Mars, with potentially five uncrewed test flights to the red planet slotted for the next two years.—NF

The economic damage piles up from Helene and Milton. In Helene-devastated Asheville, NC, businesses that rely on visitors are bracing for peak tourist season without any tourists, the Washington Post reported. Buncombe County, home to Asheville, receives nearly $3 billion from tourism each year, with a large chunk of that spending occurring during peak foliage in October. In Florida, citrus farmers who were beginning to see signs of hope for the state’s struggling orange industry were dealt a big setback by Hurricane Milton, which destroyed groves right before the key harvest season. During a visit to hard-hit areas of Florida yesterday, President Biden unveiled $612 million in recovery aid.

The US is sending an advanced anti-missile system to Israel. The Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery (THAAD) will be deployed to Israel—along with American troops to operate it—to help repel a future ballistic missile attack from Iran, the Pentagon said on Sunday, in a significant show of support for its ally. The announcement comes as President Biden rebuked Israel for its recent attacks on the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, which also drew widespread condemnation from the 40 countries contributing to that mission.

Ruth Chepngetich shattered the world record at the Chicago Marathon. By running 26.2 miles in 2:09:56, the Kenyan broke the women’s mark of 2:11:53 set by Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia at the 2023 Berlin Marathon, and became the first woman ever to break a marathon time of 2:10. Kenya pulled off the sweep in the Windy City: John Korir won the men’s race with a time of 2:02:44. It was a bittersweet day, however, for Chepngetich and Korir, who ran in honor of the late Kelvin Kiptum, a Kenyan superstar runner who died in a car accident four months after setting a world record of 2:00:35 at last year’s Chicago Marathon.

The next time you find a plumber underneath your sink fixing a leak, there’s a decent chance that person whose buttcrack is showing might be a millionaire.

Companies that specialize in home services like HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) and electrical and plumbing companies are taking six- and seven-figure paydays from private equity investors who see meaty returns in the trades, the Wall Street Journal reports. Nearly 800 of these skilled trade businesses have been purchased by PE investors since 2022, per PitchBook, and that’s likely an undercount.

Owners aren’t all looking for a way out. Ted Polk, a managing director of the Boston-based investment banking firm Capstone Partners, told the WSJ that nine out of 10 small business owners in the skilled trades field a decade ago were looking to cash out and retire. Today, about one-third of owners are taking the fat paycheck and staying on board to help the company grow.

Zoom out: A recent study by The Harris Poll on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma revealed that 50% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials plan to move into a so-called blue-collar job like welding, plumbing, or electrical work. As generative AI thrusts itself into more businesses, 66% of Americans believe trade jobs have more security than corporate ones.—DL

Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, according to a new documentary, adding another twist to the explorer’s origin story that has drawn an estimated 25 conflicting theories over 500 years, the most widely accepted of which is that Columbus hailed from Genoa, Italy.

The film, a “documentary thriller” that aired on Spain’s national broadcaster on Saturday, was staged as a reality show where each of the competing Columbus theories was eliminated until one remained. The research’s leader José Antonio Lorente, a forensic medical expert at the University of Granada, said his conclusion that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew came from a 20-year genetic investigation of the explorer’s remains, though other experts in the field were skeptical because the research wasn’t vetted by or published in a scientific journal.

This is the second time in a week that a documentary has claimed to solve the origin story of a mysterious figure. Last week, an HBO doc suggested that the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, was actually Canadian software developer Peter Todd.—NF

Baseball’s wealthiest teams compete in the ALCS and NLCS. With the lovable underdog Detroit Tigers and their minuscule $18 million roster eliminated on Saturday, it’s mostly the biggest spenders left in the MLB postseason. The teams with the three biggest projected payrolls—the Mets ($332 million), Yankees ($311 million), and Dodgers ($266 million)—are joined by the Guardians ($109 million) in the championship series. Baseball’s final four began yesterday with the Grimace-fueled Mets taking on the Shohei Ohtani-led Dodgers in the NLCS. The ALCS between the Guardians and Yankees, a series that features the star power of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto but no fast-food mascots, begins tonight in the Bronx.

Earnings season enters Week 1. And tomorrow will feel like an NFL Sunday with a full slate of reports coming from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Citigroup in the financial sector, along with healthcare giants Johnson & Johnson, Walgreens, and UnitedHealth. And just like the NFL, more drops will be spread throughout the week: Morgan Stanley will report on Wednesday, Netflix reports on Thursday, and Procter & Gamble and American Express drop their financials on Friday. It’ll pose a big test for the stock market’s $8 trillion rally this year.

Everything else…

• Nike veteran Elliott Hill takes over as CEO today, looking to turn around a struggling company whose share price has tanked 23% YTD.
• The Nobel Prize for economics will be awarded this morning. The favorite has to be whoever invented the name your own price feature on Taco Bell’s app.
• It’s Canadian Thanksgiving today. Even if you’re not Canadian, nothing is stopping you from having a turkey dinner with all the delicious sides.
• Tuesday is Tax Day 2.0 for anyone who got a six-month extension from the April 15 filing date.