Barge landing still elusive for SpaceX
Landing a rocket on an ocean barge has proven tough for SpaceX.
The company has failed three times in the past 13 months. Each effort has come close to a safe landing, but ultimately ended in explosions.
SpaceX’s latest barge landing effort is on hold after the company scrubbed planned launches on back-to-back days — Wednesday and Thursday evenings this week.
CEO Elon Musk will most likely renew his quest for a safe barge landing for the next launch.
According to Musk speeches in the past, the barge landing may be a temporary step toward landing a rocket regularly on a land-based landing pad.
“It kinda depends on how tightly we can control the landing point, and I think if we can demonstrate tight control, there are a lot of places at the Cape where we can land,”
Musk told the National Press Club in April 2014.
One of the issues he has framed in speeches, according to transcripts, is that landing on a landbased pad requires additional use of the Air Force Station, and additional safety and logistics concerns. A barge landing in the ocean is, however, a more remote place to perfect rocket landings.
SpaceX successfully returned a rocket to a landbased pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in December, which helped move the space program toward reusability and, eventually, trips to Mars.
Landing on a barge represents “proof of concept that will save them money and prove the technology,” said Rob Salonen, Florida Institute of Technology’s director of global business development. He said landing a reusable rocket on a barge “will be geared toward landing on Mars, too.”
Some industry experts say SpaceX has already made a big contribution, just by having the rocket hit the barge in the middle of the ocean.
“The simple ability to bring it back to that point in the ocean is a major achievement,” Space Florida president and CEO
SpaceX successfully returned a rocket to a land-based pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in December.
Frank DiBello said. “The more they can do that, the more they can demonstrate to anyone that they have that capability.”
In 2015, SpaceX transformed a launch pad on Florida’s Space Coast into a landing pad that the company could use repeatedly, where it first landed its rocket in December.
“This has to do with the economics of a liftoff,” DiBello said. “This will demonstrate that this is a process that can be done reliably and safely without a major impact on a region.”
SpaceX’s first barge landing attempt was in January 2014; the rocket neared the barge at an extreme angle, struck it and blew up. A follow-up attempt in April also ended in explosion — the rocket landed but tipped over before it settled completely.
Then last month, SpaceX came close again. The landing looked good for a split second. Suddenly, a support leg buckled and broke; the rocket fell like a giant tree, and blew up again.
Ray Lugo, director of the University of Central Florida’s Space Institute compared landing on a barge to an airplane landing on an aircraft carrier.
The rocket must make corrections related to how the carrier sits in the water, he said.
“It’s rolling and pitching in the water,” he said. “You have to bring in a vehicle [rocket or airplane] in a controlled manner and land it softly. It’s a difficult problem to solve.”
At the 2014 press conference, Musk said the first landing on a barge was destroyed only because of “stormy seas” that knocked the rocket over.
Even before Thursday’s launch, Musk had seemingly tempered his excitement for landing on a barge.
In a news release that preceded it, company officials said “a successful landing is not expected.”
“It’s an easier thing to say that, and respond later, than to say it’s going to succeed and it doesn’t,” Lugo said. “I respect that fact that he took a much more conservative approach.”