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Comment by richthegeek | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, I read it as intended - that the next time they will try to land will be on land.

This page is quite a useful (although not 100% accurate) summary of the near-future of SpaceX: http://spacexstats.com/upcoming.php

Certainly interesting that the FCA are willing to try a land-launch before getting a successful landing on the barge.

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I think they've ruled out the barge landing at this point. Seems like even with the stabilization, there is still too much movement. I dont see any reason they couldn't bring it back over water onto a landing pad. It should be really easy to keep the landing pad clear.

Almost certainly not. They're still working on building a second drone ship on the west coast. Even after they accomplish landings on land, there will still be a need for barge landings in two scenarios: Falcon 9 launches with payloads large enough to prohibit a full boostback burn, and more importantly, Falcon Heavy launches. On the Heavy, the two strap-on boosters will be able to make it back to land but the core stage will be much further downrange and moving much faster, almost certainly necessitating an ocean landing.

It is my understanding that the eventual goal has always been to land where they takeoff/launch from.

I never read anything that pointed towards that objective. Note that the first stage gets a lot of horizontal velocity, so bringing it back to the launch pad is expensive (fuel-wise). It is better to just cancel out the horizontal vector, follow a parabolic trajectory and land east of the launch pad.

Return to Launch Site (RTLS) has been the goal from day one. Yes, it's expensive in terms of payload (about 30%), but SpaceX thinks it's worth it. The cost to fill all tanks is ~$200,000, which pales in comparison to everything else. They will land every rocket they can (determined by how much ΔV the payload requires). I'm quite sure that reusable Falcon Heavy launches will be cheaper than expendable Falcon 9 launches, which incentivizes customers with payloads on the margin to choose the Heavy, which allows SpaceX to return at least 2 cores to the launch site.

(Neat little aside: launches from Florida and Texas can also take slight advantage of the earth rotating beneath the rocket in the direction they want it to.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM

http://www.space.com/13140-spacex-private-reusable-rocket-el...

"After separating in orbit, the two stages of the rocket would come back to Earth and land at the launch pad."

They've always intended both the boosters and the second stage to return to the launch site.

Recent statements indicate that they've given up on second stage recovery for the F9. Just too hard given current margins. That'll be in some future architecture.

It's just the least valuable thing to try to recover. Pick your battles and all that. While a recoverable payload yes its much harder but bringing something back which is valable on top of the spacecraft.

Getting S2 backs seems like 90% of the problems plus some others and not much of a payoff.

This is what lead me to believe that:

http://spacenews.com/spacex-leases-cape-canaveral-launch-pad...

I think they want to return to a launch site, just not neccessarily the site that launched the rocket in the first place. AFAIK that's why they want to have multiple sites.

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