3 ms·
The video shows a lot of white caps in the ocean so the wind was blowing pretty hard. If the wind was gusting on top of that it's not hard to see why it would
by sunstone 12y ago
The video shows a lot of white caps in the ocean so the wind was blowing pretty hard. If the wind was gusting on top of that it's not hard to see why it would be hard to keep the rocket from being blown over even if it landed properly.
- foobarge 12y agoThere's some white caps but not a whole lot. Wind speed at sea level might have been around 8 to 11m/s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale
- david-given 12y agoThe first stage will be empty of fuel and is basically a big empty metal balloon with a huge lump of metal at the bottom. The centre of gravity is very low, so while it looks really unstable it's much less bad than it looks --- like a double decker bus. OTOH, as you say, there'll also be a huge amount of windage from that big empty metal balloon... SpaceX seem to be competent, so I assume they'd factor this in. I'd be interested to see an analysis, though.