2015/01/17

SpaceX Falcon 9R Crash-landing explained.


By now we've all seen this amazing footage. This is Falcon 9's first stage trying to land on the "Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship" as seen from an onboard camera (on board to the barge, not the rocket obviously). While this is an amazing showcase of great performance of the rocket, and it demonstrates SpaceX was really really near to nail it, it may not seem so at first sight. I mean, even if it had not exploded, it still hit the ship from the side and at about 45º from vertical, right? That doesn't look like the tests of the grasshoper at all, does it?