I know that a sea LAUNCH from the equator poses advantage because (terrestrial) rotational velocity is highest from there, even for a rocket at rest, but...I don’t understand the advantage of a LANDING at sea.
Other than it would provide safety advantage for crowded, highly-developed countries like, say, Japan, etc.
Anyone know?
The advantage right now is safety. They fully indend to land it back at the launch facility on land. However, during its testing phase, they are doing this. If there is an accident, the most they can do is damage this barge.
Yes it will be Riot proof the brothers hate water
The first stage fires for about three minutes. In that time the rocket is over 20 miles high and has a significant enough horizontal flight velocity that it would require extra fuel to bring it back.
More info here.
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33439.0
Quoting from one forum entry:
‘As many people know Elon recently said that: “If we do an ocean landing (for testing purposes), the performance hit is actually quite small, maybe in the order of 15 percent. If we do a return to launch site landing, it’s probably double that, it’s more like a 30 percent hit (i.e., 30 percent of payload lost).”’
As an aside I found this.
Falcon 9 User’s Guide
http://decadal.gsfc.nasa.gov/pace-201206mdl/Launch%20Vehicle%20Information/Falcon9UsersGuide_2009.pdf