I’m sure you all have heard already, but SpaceX, a space exploration company founded by Tesla and PayPal founder Elon Musk, has successfully landed a rocket on a barge in the middle of the ocean. After 4 failed attempts, this marks a huge milestone in how we are able to reuse the tools that help us reach the furthest corners of our cosmos.
But why is this so exciting, and why should we care about it? Well, first you have to understand how we did things previously. A rocket booster would go up into space, fall off and land in the ocean, where, sometimes it would be fished out and we’d try to fix it, but oftentimes, would be completely unusable. The relaunch-ability of the Falcon 9 rocket reduces that cost tremendously.
But why land in the ocean, why not just land on land? Because the rocket exits Earth’s atmosphere in an arc, and not in a straight line, when it’s ready to come back down to Earth, it’s most probably over the ocean somewhere. Instead of using fuel to shoot itself back over to land, and re-position itself so it’s right side up, and come to a fixed point, the rocket and barge can work together to find a spot where the rocket can save fuel and where the seas aren’t so rough.
And there you have it. Further proof that SpaceX is a big deal, but you already knew that.
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