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SpaceX Successfully Lands Its Rocket On A Floating Drone Ship Again (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the going-as-planned dept.

Early Friday morning, SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea for the second time. The company has recovered the post-launch vehicle a total of three times, two of which involved the rocket landing on a floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Before the launch, the landing was deemed unlikely as the rocket would be "subject to extreme velocities and re-entry heating" in its attempt to launch a Japanese communications satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit high above Earth. Elon Musk tweeted: "Rocket reentry is a lot faster and hotter than last time, so odds of making it are maybe even, but we should learn a lot either way." As a result of the successful mission, Musk followed up with, "May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar." The first successful launch was in December, when the rocket landed at a ground-based spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The second landing occurred in April on a floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

2 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. So what? by YesIAmAScript · · Score: -1, Troll

    Those GPS satellites were put up. There was no requirement for rocket recovery to make that happen.

    What this does is make launches cheaper.

    How does that affect me?

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  2. Re:Simple question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    "There are no stupid questions" is sometimes wrong. However let's be fair to the parent. Global warming is more important than the. However, there are big oil companies that knew about global warming since the sixties and have been preparing to lie about it since just after. They have so much money invested in those lies it is extremely difficult to push out the truth.

    Satellites allow us to directly measure the warming and it's effects making the lies of the global warming deniers so obvious that many of those they duped are now starting to see through to the truth. Cheaper satellites is likely to help with this. You will notice that we no longer hear about measurement station related errors in the temperature data. Satellites are the thing that disposed of that particular trick.