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Comment by knd775 | Hacker News Reader

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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