In article , says...

On 8/14/2016 8:05 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:

A Sixth Success! SpaceX Again Lands Rocket on a Ship at Sea

This is not only another success, but another data point on the path to
routine booster re-usability.

SpaceX calls these landings "Challenging" yet their recent string of
successful recoveries seems increasingly unlikely to be a statistical
fluke. It appears that SpaceX can bank on a future recovery success
rate that will be significantly better than 50%. That said, I'm willing
to stick my neck out enough to guess that, given the narrow margins
involved, they are unlikely to approach a 100% recovery success rate
anytime soon.

But how will recovery impact SpaceX future operations? After all,
waiting for good weather in the recovery area isn't compatible with
SpaceX's goal of a greatly increased launch tempo.

You need good weather for launch, which includes relatively calm wind
speeds from the ground on up, so this is largely a non-issue. The
exception would be when the mission calls for a barge landing and ocean
conditions are rough, despite good weather for launch. How likely is
that? I'm not a weather expert, but my guess would be not likely.

I will be interested to see how they deal with the certainty of future
recovery area uncooperative weather. Will they be willing to delay
launches, possibly for weeks, solely because recovery is temporarily
impossible?

In the unlikely event that the weather is good for launch but bad for
landing, I'm guessing this is up to SpaceX and the customer to
negotiate. Even SpaceX doesn't expect to get all of their first stages
back, so losing a few to strange weather conditions (good for launch,
but bad for a barge landing) should not be an issue.

When high winds or waves in the recovery area weather make recovery
unlikely, will they deliberately land boosters in the ocean rather than
suffer virtually certain damage to their recovery barge?

Again, how likely are high winds in the recovery area, yet winds at the
launch site are calm enough to launch?

Jeff
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