Vine: SpaceX rocket landing on droneship just misses

Why not just have it land on actual land?

What am I looking at there? Looks like someone dropped a doobie in a gasoline puddle

quote:

---

Why not just have it land on actual land?

---

I think the long term plan is to be able to land it back the launch pad. Then they can just give it a once over and fuel her back up and shoot it back into space.

The reason space flight is so expensive is because everytime we launch a rocket we are just throwing it away. They cost on average $55 million and the fuel only cost a like 200K. The cost of sending payloads to space will decrease exponentially if recovering the rocket becomes the norm.

quote:

---

Why not just have it land on actual land?

---

Good point. We'll use your back yard. No?

Also, I'm not sure that NASA's range safety would ever allow them to fly a rocket stage toward the East Coast and all those back yards up and down the coast. If you can avoid putting it in the water as well that's good, as that salt water bath would require a lot of careful cleaning because of the corrosion possibilities that would drive the cost of refurbishment up. So, the next best thing is to land it on a barge to keep it away from pink, squishy humans, and keep it out of the water. Then you just float it back to the launch complex for refurbishment.

Whether y'all realize it or not, that is some Buck Rogers shite. The fact they got that thing to fly back to a place, slow down and almost land is amazing. I am trying to conceive of the amount of calculations involved. How do they compensate for wind gusts?

Why don't they just let it land in the water? It's an empty tank at that point so it will float. Just scoop it up, hose it off, and use it again.

Those cows don't seem to like all the commotion.

Can't believe they are that close on only the second try.. If they are able to bring the cost down to even a million a launch then they can really accelerate commercial use of space.