Comment by wat10000
4 days ago
The “chopstick” catcher arrangement seems awfully fragile. Would the ground equipment have survived this if it had been a real catch?
4 days ago
The “chopstick” catcher arrangement seems awfully fragile. Would the ground equipment have survived this if it had been a real catch?
Yes, because it would have landed a few hundred meters out from the chopsticks. It swings in towards the catcher as part of its slowdown. If it doesn't slow down, that doesn't happen.
They generally initiate landing aiming just off shore and only adjust to the landing pad after everything is nominal. So yes.
Rockets have a self destruct feature to avoid exactly this type of contingency
By the time that the booster returns to the landing zone, the Flight Termination System (FTS) is AFAIK no longer active and cannot be reactivated. Which makes sense because it is a bunch of high explosives, now nearing some valuable equipment.
The SpaceX solution is to steer carefully and have the default trajectory end in the sea. Only if everything looks good, is the booster redirected to the tower.
I wonder what happens when things go wrong after everything looks good. They punched a good number of holes in their landing barges when they were perfecting Falcon 9 landings. And I imagine this crazy catch tower is a lot more expensive than a barge with a flat surface.
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