'with no required refurbishment' - this is a big deal. Until this launch SpaceX has been saying that they didn't know how much refurbishment was required.
How about an old oil platform. They are perfectly stable.
Quote from: sublimemarsupial on 07/22/2014 07:22 pmFrom the update on the SpaceX site:"We will attempt our next water landing on flight 13 of Falcon 9, but with a low probability of success. Flights 14 and 15 will attempt to land on a solid surface with an improved probability of success."The real story here is flights 14 & 15 on LAND!! That's before the end of this year.Does this mean they have gotten precise in hitting a designated landing location?I wonder if F9R-Dev 2 is going to be needed if they keep collecting data with these flights?
From the update on the SpaceX site:"We will attempt our next water landing on flight 13 of Falcon 9, but with a low probability of success. Flights 14 and 15 will attempt to land on a solid surface with an improved probability of success."
At this point, we are highly confident of being able to land successfully on a floating launch pad or back at the launch site and refly the rocket with no required refurbishment. However, our next couple launches are for very high velocity geostationary satellite missions, which don’t allow enough residual propellant for landing. In the longer term, missions like that will fly on Falcon Heavy, but until then Falcon 9 will need to fly in expendable mode.We will attempt our next water landing on flight 13 of Falcon 9, but with a low probability of success. Flights 14 and 15 will attempt to land on a solid surface with an improved probability of success.
Quote from: Xspace_engineerX on 07/22/2014 07:47 pm'with no required refurbishment' - this is a big deal. Until this launch SpaceX has been saying that they didn't know how much refurbishment was required.I'm not sure what they meant there, but it seems like something they wouldn't be able to state accurately UNTIL they could inspect a star returned to land. (End of this year(?), if flight 14 will land)The outlier reason might be IF they were able to recover a significant amount of vital hardware. Have we heard if anything was recovered?
The real question is, is this news about potentially attempting solid-surface landings part of the post Chris had to hide all those months ago?
Or possibly some sort of barge.
Checked the recommended helipad sizes (https://new.rotor.com/portals/1/publication/Heliports_25_Most_Asked_Questions.pdf)65 square feet to 100 square feet - small indeed.
The landing burn almost looked like it was sputtering. Why would it look like that?
Actually, according to the linked report, 65 foot square to 100 foot square, i.e. a 65 ft by 65 ft to 100 ft by 100 ft foot area. 65 square feet would be 8ft x 8ft, which would fit only model helicopters .For the solid surface, I vote iceberg.