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So hopefully someone can answer this, but what's the reason they don't put the droneships WAY down range of the rockets? So instead of having to fully stop and
by Klathmon 11y ago
So hopefully someone can answer this, but what's the reason they don't put the droneships WAY down range of the rockets?
So instead of having to fully stop and reverse, they position them so they can arc back down and only has to stop its momentum.
- rtkwe 11y agoCRS-8 which was the one that successfully landed on the barge recently was going 6600 kmph at 71 km when the first stage cut off, most of that was horizontal speed. They have to reduce that speed to both not break apart in the atmosphere. They can't have a lot of horizontal momentum low in the atmosphere and still land straight up on the barge. The rocket has hard limits on how much it can control it's orientation inside the atmosphere because it only has small cold gas thrusters and the grid fins to really control roll pitch and yaw.