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And they had enough confidence that it might work that they attempted to land the first attempt on solid ground instead of in the water.
by sytse 6y ago
And they had enough confidence that it might work that they attempted to land the first attempt on solid ground instead of in the water.
- jonplackett 6y agoYeah I thought they might do the same kind of 'pretend to land' hover over the water the first time, but no! Maybe because they want to be able to keep it for posterity if it makes it - or launch it again!
- bob33212 6y agoIt is the flight back that they need data for, not landing.
- rst 6y agoNot much different from early work on Falcon 9 landings -- the Grasshopper test rig and F9R-dev-1 prototype both did a bunch of land-to-land hops (the last being the crash that destroyed F9R-dev-1 after an engine failure) before they transitioned to attempted water landings from orbital flights
- oska 6y ago> (the last being the crash that destroyed F9R-dev-1 after an engine failure) From memory I think it blew itself up in the air when something went wrong, rather than crashing.
- mulmen 6y agoThe F9 water landing attempts were just because it was so far downrange though right? Not because a water landing would have been somehow better for the vehicle?
- chasd00 6y agoiirc when spacex asked permission to land a falcon9 on the ground it was a firm "are you crazy? no." So lots of water practice.
- mulmen 6y agoHmm yeah you may be right. I definitely remember some failures that stopped above the water then tipped over but I don’t remember the circumstances.
- wolfram74 6y agoIf they'd decided for a water "landing" with SN8, I'd have assumed it was because they wanted any failures to happen further away from their test infrastructure, not necessarily because it was easier.