SpaceX Successfully Lands Its Rocket On A Floating Drone Ship For The First Time (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: SpaceX has finally landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea, after launching the vehicle into space this afternoon. It's the first time the company has been able to pull off an ocean landing, after four previous attempts ended in failure. This is the second time SpaceX has successfully landed one of its rockets post-launch; the first time was in December, when the company's Falcon 9 rocket touched down at a ground-based landing site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, after putting a satellite into space. Now that SpaceX has demonstrated it can do both types of landings, the company can potentially recover and reuse even more rockets in the future. And that could mean much greater cost savings for SpaceX.

Comments

Re:That came in at a pretty steep angle

[fgodfrey]

There are two reasons that I've seen.

Because the rocket is almost out of fuel, even burning only one engine at minimum throttle, the thrust to weight ratio is more than one (ie, the rocket would fly, not land). So, they can't hover, they have to hit the ship and shut the engine off at the exact moment that the velocity is zero (or very close to it). So, to help with that problem, they come in at an angle which helps consume at least some of the thrust in a direction that isn't upward.

The second reason is, as you say, to protect the landing platform. If they run out of fuel (or the engine fails or....), the stage just drops into the ocean rather than crashing into the barge at a very high speed. That said, based on their last several failed landing attempts, that barge can take quite a hit and stay in one piece....