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SpaceX landed a rocket on a boat five years ago—it changed everything - Ars Technica

SpaceX landed a rocket on a boat five years ago—it changed everything - Ars Technica

SpaceX landed a rocket on a boat five years ago—it changed everything - Ars Technica
Apr 08, 2021 1 min, 39 secs

Five years ago today, SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket first stage on a boat.

I was not prepared for the experience of watching a skinny, black-and-white rocket fall out of the sky, against the azure backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean, and land on a small drone ship.

For, in my mind, landing a Falcon 9 first stage at sea represented an essential step toward reducing the cost of getting people and payloads into space and unlocked a bright spacefaring future.

A few months prior to this boat landing, of course, SpaceX had successfully returned a Falcon 9 first stage to its "landing zone" along the Florida coast, near its launch pad.

But landing on a drone ship is that much more difficult.

When touching down at sea, both the rocket and the drone ship are moving, and there are sea states and more to consider.

That's because over the course of a launch, a rocket gradually leans from a vertical to horizontal orientation as it prepares to release its second stage on an orbital trajectory.

A Falcon 9 rocket that lands on a drone ship can lift about 5.5 tons to geostationary transfer orbit, compared to 3.5 tons for a rocket that lands back at the launch site.

Had SpaceX not figured out how to land the Falcon 9 first stage on a drone ship, it would have eliminated about 40 percent of the rocket's lift capability, a huge penalty that would have negated the benefit of reusing rockets.

Since acquiring its patent, Blue Origin has yet to launch an orbital rocket, let alone land one.

By contrast, since its first successful landing on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, SpaceX has safely returned 56 more Falcon 9 rockets at sea.

Of SpaceX's 10 orbital rocket launches in 2021, every one of them rode to orbit on a previously flown first stage.

Some returned to space within four weeks of a previous launch. By landing its first Falcon 9 rocket at sea, SpaceX began a revolution in launch.

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