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Comment by danielbln | Hacker News Reader

The cult is funny indeed, but do mind that the giant SpaceX booster rockets exploded in giant balls of fire a LOT before they eventually (and reliably) landed like in a sci-fi movie, on land and on a moving boat. SpaceX has earned some benefit of the doubt.

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I don't think the issue is that a prototype didn't function as desired, it's the re-framing of that event as a "success" that reeks of cult-like worship mentality.

When something doesn't behave as desired, it is a failure. You can learn from failure, that's how you get to success, but the failure itself is not a success.

I agree calling it a success is too rosy, but I think people are really thinking od this as progress, not a regression like the event itself would naively suggest, because the company relies on hardware failure to inform design improvements.

FWIW the “boat” is not moving. This is in contrast to Blue Origin’s reusable booster which will literally be landing on a moving boat.

What do you mean by "not moving"? The platform sat on the surface of an ocean. It's always moving.

What he means is that the boat is moving up and down but keeps a stationary latitude/longitude.

The rocket has static landing coordinates, and if the boat were to move a few meters to either side it would miss it.

It’s nearly impossible to stay put in the sea where waves and swell are meters high. The boat actually does try to stand still, for which they developed their own positioning / thrust system, but the tolerance is something like 3m-6m with the rocket adjusting its path on the fly.

But there are definitely no “static coordinates”, it would have to move a lot more than a few meters for the rocket to miss, and it would be due to trajectory and fuel constraints rather than ability to maneuver.

I would suggest the boat is always moving to be able to stay in the same place

SpaceX is almost certainly using an ILS-type radio system for the final 100 meters, both on the boat and on land. GPS just isn't quite good enough, especially out on the ocean where there are no WAAS base stations to cover up GPS' flaws.

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