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what's strange to me is why not continue to delay. how much money are they blowing by letting it land in the ocean? I suppose they are under some kind of cont
by legohead 12y ago
what's strange to me is why not continue to delay. how much money are they blowing by letting it land in the ocean? I suppose they are under some kind of contractual obligation?
- gamegoblin 12y agoCorrect. They are contracted to launch a satellite. Anything more (such as doing landing experiments) are wholly secondary to that goal.
- legohead 12y agowell that much is obvious. what I meant was, they have already delayed 3 days, why can't they keep delaying? does it say in the contract it has to be delivered by such and such date?
- JshWright 12y agoIf they end up having to scrub today, the moon will be in the way for a while (this satellite is actually going out well past the orbit of the Moon) and the next launch window wouldn't be until the 20th. Regardless of any contractual obligations, I think it's pretty obvious that future customers would be wary of SpaceX if they were to intentionally delay a paying customer's payload for a completely optional test, unrelated to the mission that was paid for.
- ufmace 12y agoI don't think "blowing money" really applies at this level, where it's a speculative test. The customer is paying the full price of the whole rocket, just like every other space launch that has ever been carried out up to now. They are perhaps missing an opportunity to get a full-power landing test in on a customer's dime, but it's better to not risk alienating customers with delays that have no relation to the mission that they're paying for.