Quote:
Originally Posted by Cornstock
This was the first launch I've watched live, YouTube sent me a notification about 30 prelaunch or I would have missed it. Really insightful and informative coverage. Exciting first 10 minutes. I was pulled away so I missed the fairing separation, I'll go back and try to find it.
Can someone explain the significance of how difficult it was to recover the booster? Elon sounded like it was pretty impressive it survived
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Rocket boosters - especially empty rocket boosters - are very strong vertically, but they're really weak horizontally. If you watch the old explosive landing videos, a lot of them almost land, but when they hit the deck horizontally, the entire thing immediately ruptures.
The expectation is that the booster would tear and explode after hitting the water, but this one apparently slid down into the water so smoothly that it remained pressurized and intact.
Mind you, this booster is trashed and will absolutely never fly again. The salt water will damage pretty much everything even ignoring it'll be dragged through the water 100 miles.
But they might be able to get some good data from it or otherwise learn from it.