Landing a Rocket on a Barge...Like a Boss.

[spacemonkey]

I suppose Vegas is already taking bets.

[Spider]

I don't buy for a second the idea that there isn't footage. What? With the giant rocket coming down out of the sky with a lit up engine they didn't have enough light? And really, someone couldn't zip tie a Go Pro to a handrail or something? Space X just doesn't want everyone on YouTube picking apart every frame of footage of one of their fancy boosters crumpling on the deck of that ship. Not very flattering footage isn't the same as a lack of footage.

That said...just getting the thing to come down onto the deck of a ship hundreds of miles out to sea from a couple hundred miles up at some unthinkable velocity is still epically awesome. Pretty small target.

[spacemonkey]

[Spider]

Can't get away with lying about it. There is footage of previous soft landings, anyways. They just don't want to tarnish themselves with footage of what amounts to a crash.

If the next attempt also yields no footage, we'll know some f**k is going on.

[The Comrade]

saw a photo of the barge on reddit. looks like the thing smashed down on one of the corners. current word is that hydraulic fluid on one of the fins ran out which i imagine made it tumble instead of come down straight.

[The Comrade]

https://vine.co/v/OjqeYWWpVWK

yup. one of the fins was f**k up and it came down wrong. nice that it's just a technical glitch.

[Spider]

[The Comrade]

what's great too is that had the stabilizing fin been working properly i have no doubt it would have landed dead center on the barge. gimbaling can only take it so far.

[Spider]

Hmm. Right before the end of the webcast for the launch just now one of the mission controllers said, "First stage splashdown."

Which doesn't sound like the desired outcome.

Oh well. Because the profile is for a deep space launch (this thing is going out 3 times further than the moon) the reentry apparently involved twice the dynamic forces on and 4 times the heat.

[Spider]