In article , says...

In message
Rick Jones wrote:
I was assuming "ocean landing" was really "sea-barge" - does one
really want to be soaking a booster one expects to re-use in salt
water? Of course, I suspect that means *three* sea-barges for an F9H,
probably each some reasonable distance apart because you don't want a
fubar with one arriving booster taking-out the other two.

That's what I'd understood as well. The platform for the core stage will
be further down range than the ones for the side boosters anyway, and
you might be able to get away with a single long platform with some
superstructure acting as a blast shield between two pads as the stages
ought to be running on fumes by then. It will probably come down to
running costs for two platforms compared to replacement cost of an
occasional first stage.

You'd have to do a detailed analysis to find out what is cheaper in the
long run. But I'm guessing that comparing the relatively low fuel costs
for flying the stages back versus the cost of building, operating, and
maintaining such a mobile ocean going landing platform is going to yield
a very clear answer.

The trade here is performance versus cost. Elon is hyper focused on
cost. If a customer demands higher performance, they can always pay the
higher cost of expending the Heavy's center core rather than recovering
it. If the customer really wants to spend some money, they could pay
for all stages to be expended. But in that case, why bother with Falcon
Heavy in the first place? Why not fly on a Delta IV Heavy instead?

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer