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SpaceX Successfully Lands A Falcon 9 Rocket At Sea For The Third Time (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: SpaceX has successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean for the third time in a row. The Verge reports: "It was the third time in a row the company has landed a rocket booster at sea, and the fourth time overall. The landing occurred a few minutes before the second stage of the Falcon 9 delivered the THAICOM-8 satellite to space, where it will make its way to geostationary geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). GTO is a high-elliptical orbit that is popular for satellites, sitting more than 20,000 miles above the Earth. The 3,100-kilogram satellite will spend 15 years improving television and data signals across Southeast Asia." The company landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship for the second time earlier this month. UPDATE 5/27/15: Frank249 writes in a comment: "Elon Musk just tweeted: 'Rocket landing speed was close to design max and used up contingency crush core, hence back and forth motion. Prob ok, but some risk of tipping.'" He went on to tweet: "Crush core is aluminum honeycomb for energy absorption in the telescoping actuator. Easy to replace (if Falcon makes it back to port)."
I watched the live stream on this newfangled internet thingy and I must say, I felt a little bit of the old excitement I experienced as a kid when watching the Apollo missions on our old black & white TV back in the day. Sticking that landing (on a friggin drone ship fer Chrissakes) for the second time in a row is one heckuva feat of engineering,
Tell you what, those SpaceX kids are welcome on my lawn anytime.