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SpaceX is considering a ground landing for its next first stage return attempt

The competition heats up: After its second attempt this week to land its first stage on a barge in the Atlantic, SpaceX is now considering landing their next attempt on the ground.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. The reason they have been landing over the ocean in these initial tests was for safety. The last two landings however had demonstrated that they can reliably bring that first stage back accurately and precisely. Since they have the ability to destroy the stage should it go off course, it seems reasonable to shift to land now and simplify their challenge.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

5 comments

  • PeterF

    It was daily obvious with the last attempt that had the target been larger, the booster would have been able make a vertical landing. The last second correction caused the crash.

  • I’d think they’d like to bring the first, and eventually second, stages back to the launch facility to reduce costs

  • BSJ

    I’ve believed landing on a moving/floating platform wouldn’t work because there would be no way to dampen out ALL motion solely caused by wave action.

    I just had a thought on another force that would cause the barge to move. The trust coming from the rocket itself would impart another changing axis of motion that the barge’s thrusters would have to try to deal with.

    There’s just no way the thrusters could move enough water fast enough to keep the barge dead level long enough for all four landing legs to touch the deck at exactly the same moment…

    In the video shot from the barge, you can see at least one of the legs failed. I bet they weren’t designed to be strong enough to bear the weight of the entire rocket on just one leg.

  • Matt in AZ

    It may turn out Blue Origin’s patent fight for barge landings will be rather moot.

  • Paul Hosea

    Why would she say they’d be more hesitant to blow up a rocket with a payload still aboard? She might get some flack for this one. Spacex, like all western and Russian providers, has range safety officers that work independently from the launch team. They are trained to blow the thing up if its flight path looks threatening in any way. Costs don’t factor into it, because the mission is lost anyway if the flight path changes anywhere near that much.

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