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[forsaken1111]

I want to be rich enough to play KSP with real rockets too.

They got so close! I understand that a landing leg buckled on touchdown. If it hadn't, the rocket would have remained upright.

Just hitting the barge at all is an amazing feat. The fact that they almost managed a powered autonomous soft landing on a barge in the ocean is nothing short of spectacular.

[Graknorke]

Musk said that it was because of excess lateral velocity on landing. So an issue with the landing computer rather than the design of the stage.

[3x3]

I was playing it *illegally*, but it is such a good game that i am waiting a discount on steam to buy it.

[BigD145]

I was playing it *illegally*, but it is such a good game that i am waiting a discount on steam to buy it.

It was on sale at humble bundle in the past week or so.

[Aseaheru]

Plus, there is a demo...

[Greiger]

It kinda confuses me why they are attempting to land the rocket that way. I mean KSP isn't real life but doesn't taking enough fuel to land nearly double the amount of fuel you need to take off?  That landing fuel isn't exactly in hammerspace during takeoff and it probably weighs a significant amount.  It's like putting some additional booster rockets on but setting them to separate when they are only 3/4ths empty.

Why not...I donno... a parachute and some flotation bouys?  That's gotta weigh less and be cheaper than a few tons of rocket fuel and still allows recovery.

[Rose]

Not double, no.

Once the stage is separated, and most of the fuel is gone, it's far lighter, and requires much less fuel to slow down and land. Also air resistance helps here.

[Graknorke]

Precision. With parachutes you're at the mercy of the weather as to how much you drift. With a powered landing you can land on an area as small as Just Read the Instructions. This is very much important, as the end goal is to land it on a landing pad on the ground.

[forsaken1111]

Why not...I donno... a parachute and some flotation bouys?  That's gotta weigh less and be cheaper than a few tons of rocket fuel and still allows recovery.

1. Seawater is bad for rockets. Ideal would be to land the rocket on land but the launch point and earth's rotation make that difficult and you really don't want a big rocket full of fuel coming down at a populated area.
2. Parachutes don't give you the control you need to land on a small barge in the ocean.
3. It looks awesome and is a great PR stunt.

[Skyrunner]

I think the real reason is because...

(1) Need to slow down the rocket before hitting the atmosphere. Parachutes won't help.

(2) Even if you do touch down perfectly, the sea's waves destroy the stage.

Hence why the barge.

Edit: The reason they want to recover the thing in the first place  is because most of the rocket cost is not in the fuel,  but rather the machinery. So using fuel to land does cut into how much they can send into space, but in the cost perspective nothing much changes.

Edit2: parachutes large enough to handle the first stage are also very heavy, plus they tend to shred at high speed, plus they are not steerable, and finally the fuel needed to bring the rocket back isn't that huge as you'd think it'd be.

[Krevsin]

Why not...I donno... a parachute and some flotation bouys?  That's gotta weigh less and be cheaper than a few tons of rocket fuel and still allows recovery.

Ideal would be to land the rocket on land but the launch point and earth's rotation make that difficult and you really don't want a big rocket full of fuel coming down at a populated area.

It's mostly the latter. The gov't won't let them land on land before they are capable of demonstrating the precision needed to avoid a catastrophe (which seems unlikely given that most launch sites are far away from major urban centers). SpaceX are right now in the process of getting a permission to attempt their next recovery on land.

[forsaken1111]

Why not...I donno... a parachute and some flotation bouys?  That's gotta weigh less and be cheaper than a few tons of rocket fuel and still allows recovery.

Ideal would be to land the rocket on land but the launch point and earth's rotation make that difficult and you really don't want a big rocket full of fuel coming down at a populated area.

It's mostly the latter. The gov't won't let them land on land before they are capable of demonstrating the precision needed to avoid a catastrophe (which seems unlikely given that most launch sites are far away from major urban centers). SpaceX are right now in the process of getting a permission to attempt their next recovery on land.

Yeah I heard they want to launch from Texas and recover it at Florida or somesuch?

[MarcAFK]

The extra mass needed to recover the booster cuts down total payload by 15% or something, but the physical first stage is worth far more than 15% of the rocket's cost, therefore it makes economic sense to attempt recovery.

[Shadowlord]

Saltwater ruining the rocket is something I didn't realize until I read about it in a news article a few days ago, since it doesn't seem to be a problem in KSP. (And with mods, we can drop rockets with giant inflatable balloons surrounding them into the water, so they float on top of it)

Parachutes being too imprecise for landing a rocket somewhere specific seems pretty obvious, though.

[Krevsin]

Why not...I donno... a parachute and some flotation bouys?  That's gotta weigh less and be cheaper than a few tons of rocket fuel and still allows recovery.

Ideal would be to land the rocket on land but the launch point and earth's rotation make that difficult and you really don't want a big rocket full of fuel coming down at a populated area.

It's mostly the latter. The gov't won't let them land on land before they are capable of demonstrating the precision needed to avoid a catastrophe (which seems unlikely given that most launch sites are far away from major urban centers). SpaceX are right now in the process of getting a permission to attempt their next recovery on land.

Yeah I heard they want to launch from Texas and recover it at Florida or somesuch?

As far as I know they have a landing complex in Florida, where launches from the Kennedy Space Centre will land. I'm not sure if the landing complex is complete though.

They also have a launch site and landing complex on the west coast, in Vandenberg. They are going to launch a rocket from there this summer and that's supposed to have a ground landing as well.


Personally, I don't think they'll use the barge for anything other than these demonstration missions and maybe a falcon heavy core landing. Too much wind and wave motion to keep the stage upright even if it lands fine. Unless the weather is absolutely perfect (no strong winds, low waves et cetera).