3 ms·

Could they land it in some huge lake?

• jandrese 9y ago
  Freshwater is probably only marginally better and if anything goes wrong the chances that the debris falls on land is much higher. Unfortunately the Great Lakes are too far north.
• greglindahl 9y ago
  They land them on a barge. This was an experiment that might have damaged the barge.
• lorenzhs 9y ago
  Why would they prefer a lake to solid ground? If there was a fuel budget for return to launch site, they’d do that before flying it into a lake. Hell, they’d land it on a patch of grass before dumping it in water. There’s nothing to be gained by making the rocket wet (or a lake all rocket-y, those things are dirty with soot and stuff). They just weren’t sure that it wouldn’t punch a big fat hole in the ship (plus the ship is needed for Falcon Heavy next week), so they’d rather have the rocket get all seawatery than the ship hole-y. As long as the telemetry comes back, who needs an old rocket? Might still learn something from retrieving it but it’s not worth reflying as this booster was an older version that is rather expensive to refurbish.
• simonh 9y ago
  You’d have to launch it over a lake, but you’re not allowed to fly the first stage over populated areas so it would have to be a very remote huge lake. That’s quite a limiting set of requirements.