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Can somebody please remind me again why we have to land this thing on a barge on water instead of land?
by perseusprime11 11y ago
Can somebody please remind me again why we have to land this thing on a barge on water instead of land?
- connorshea 11y agoIt's because there's not enough fuel to make it back to a landing pad.
- ygra 11y agoAnd they actually explained that in the video: https://youtu.be/7pUAydjne5M?t=23m37s https://youtu.be/7pUAydjne5M?t=23m37s
- perseusprime11 11y agoThanks guys.
- ceejayoz 11y agoAccording to https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4dtoly/rspacex_spacex_crs8_official_launch_discussion/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4dtoly/rspacex_spac... this one did have enough fuel, but the next couple won't, so they wanted the practice.
- tsuraan 11y agoThe part that's landing is the stage 1 rocket, which pushes the payload through max atmospheric pressure and near the edge of the atmosphere. By the time it's done doing its thing, it's going really fast away from its launch position. To land back where it started, it needs to reverse its (horizontal) velocity, which takes fuel. Some launch profiles leave it enough fuel to fly all the way back home, but some don't. I believe it's expected that the heavy launcher (basically three stage1's side-by-side) will always have to land the central stage at sea, because the center stage will keep pushing after the side stages are done, and it will be going way too fast to come back again. Not an expert, but that's my understanding of things.
- jonknee 11y agoIt's cheaper that going back to the pad.
- baq 11y agoserious answer: play kerbal space program for a few hours. it gives you lots of intuition for such questions.