Reply to post: Re: Let's look at what's there...

Re: Let's look at what's there...

@BobC:

Given the limited space on the deck and the spread of landing points seen in the landings so far I doubt they'd have enough confidence to land more than one core on the same deck. Nor would I suspect they'd want to due to vibration/noise damage to the core already on the deck when a next one comes down. Do not underestimate just how much damage acoustics from a rocket engine can do. It's one of the main problems to solve in silo launched ICBMs for instance. Without mitigation they would shake themselves to bits before leaving the silo.

As mentioned before SpaceX has noticed the first stage has a tendency to "walk" across the deck in rough seas between the landing and the welding crew getting there to weld it to the deck. The stage doesn't stay where it lands, so one could end up taking a topple after a successful landing. Next to that there is also the problem that the stage is never really centred on the deck after the landing and there is no provisions on the barge to move it to the centre (or to the edge of the deck to hoist it onto a support ship to clear the barge). Thus it makes perfect sense to design something that can move the core to the centre of the ship and hold it there until the support crew can swoop in to weld it to the deck or transfer the core to a support vessel. My guess is transfer to a support vessel is actually the long term plan, so that the barge can stay out at sea while the much faster moving support vessel shuttles the first stages back to port)

For falcon heavy the centre core will either not be recovered or if it is it will land MUCH further out than the booster cores. By the time the centre core stage separates it'll be moving at probably about 1.5 km/s, so it takes some serious burning to get it back to a barge the booster cores can reach. (But as said before, the booster cores are planned to return to the LZ pads at the spacecentre) More likely they'll have a barge much further out, so the centre core can use the atmosphere do some of the breaking and stay on a mostly ballistic trajectory.

Then again, I'm not a rocket scientist. I just play one on Kerbin.