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ISS also is a lot of metal already in orbit. At some point in the future it may be profitable to recycle it (and probably lot of other big chunks of junk) into something usable.

Horizontal landing would require much stronger and heavier structure. Wings also would add significant weight. It would need some jet engines to return back to launch site (more complexity and more weight) Reusable Falcon9 has only minimal modifications compared to expandable version. I bet...

I'm curious how Blue Origin will land their orbital rocket currently in development. BE4 engine is too big to use Falcon 9 approach with 9 engines running at launch, but only one throttled back as much as possible at landing. New Shepard has much higher structural mass fraction than orbital...

At least looks like they have engines this time. Depending on how severe was fire after crash it is possible some engines are in good enough condition for post landing inspection. Probably not much to gain after they already have intact stage to study, but still may be possible to get some...

Stronger landing gear with shock absorption capability would be a lot heavier. Although likely lighter than extra fuel needed for full boostback burn to landing pad at launch site. If another few drone ship landings fail then it is possible Space X may design new landing gear that can tolerate...

Those landing legs just don't look sturdy enough to take any abuse. I suspect when stage touched down barge was rising on a wave and combined impact velocity of stage coming down and barge rising exceeded capabilities of landing legs.

I think even if reuse costs more than estimated ability to bring used stage back for inspection has the potential to improve reliability for expandable version as well. They can check it for stresses, maybe there are areas where they are barely avoiding failure (like the faulty struts) that can...

Hell Yeah!!! They did it!!! Will have few beers for this :cheers:

IIRC during testing one Saturn V S-IVB stage suffered helium tank explosion causing total destruction of the stage. In this case something similar may have happened. Suddenly rupturing helium tank would be sudden event with no trouble signs showing up on telemetry before the explosion.

If this failure is related to second stage and takes some redesign to fix it I wonder if it would be possible to launch Dragon on Atlas V to keep ISS supplied.

I'm not sure hovering would have helped in the last landing attempt. Rocket started to tilt back and forth because of lagging valve. If it tried to hover the oscillations would become larger and larger until it crashed. As I understand something like this happened. Guidance computer give...

What debris would remain afloat after several months at sea and be recognizable as aircraft parts to average person walking on the beach?

Pretty impressive how they are ramping up their launch schedule. In 2015 Falcon 9 probably will be the most often flown US rocket.

At that point stage is nearly empty and very light. Even if engine failed to ignite for final braking burn and stage fell on the barge at terminal velocity I doubt it would sink. A barge like they use usually have multiple longitudinal and transverse bulkheads making multiple sealed compartments...

Neat thing about SpaceX approach towards reusable rocket stages is as long as they charge their customers for expandable version they can afford to crash stages until they get all the bugs out and still make profit. If some company develops reusable spaceplane costing billions crashing a...

Did it went overboard after landing? If at least engine section managed to stay on barge then they will get a ton of useful data from taking it apart even if landing as whole was failure.

If the hijackers wanted only some cargo or person onboard a survivable crash landing may be acceptable. An abandoned WW II or Vietnam war era US airforce base may have runway long and strong enough to support 777 landing and takeoff however I bet such places were checked as soon as it become...

This gets stranger and stranger. Currently I think most likely scenario is the plane was hijacked and then crashed somewhere in the ocean because it ran out of fuel or passengers broke into cockpit and started to fight with hijackers. I fail to see how it could possibly landed somewhere and...

Surface to LEO don't require new technologies, I'm all for NASA developing, more advanced space probes, deep space habitats, advanced life support, in space propulsion, but they could launch that stuff on commercially available rockets and skip developing entirely new rocket.

Yeah, Skylon, hope they succeed and they will need some big money to go past initial design stages more than Orbital Sciences or SpaceX because they are actually pushing the technological edge and that always is expensive.