Inventor and engineer Elon Musk said on Monday that SpaceX will be deploying a rocket platform off of the Space Coast of Florida to join in rotation with another drone ship, which is stationed at Cape Canaveral. Musk also said that the third drone ship of SpaceX’s ocean going recovery vessel rocket fleet is currently under construction, adding on Twitter that it will be called “A Shortfall Of Gravitas”. This unusual moniker is simply following the tradition of naming the vessels after sentient ships from the deceased Scottish author Iain Banks’ novels; the other two rockets in the fleet are called, “Just Read The Instructions”, and “Of Course I Still Love You”.
Musk further wrote that the stationing of “A Shortfall of Gravitas” in Florida is to not only permit dual ocean landings from the double side boosters of the Falcon Heavy but to support the Falcon 9’s high flight rates. When the Falcon 9 carries heavy payloads, which are missions that go into a higher orbit, it it necessary for the rocket to have a first stage landing in the sea. However, this practice of first stage landings leaves a small amount of liquid oxygen propellants and kerosene for returning the rocket to a landing pad along the coast.
The more demanding missions of the Falcon Heavy rocket may require the use of dual side boosters – which would be taken from the first stages of the Falcon 9 – in order to complete a landing that is downrange from the actual launch site. In the event of this occurring, the Falcon Heavy would have to do an unrecoverable drain its fuel from the center core to send the payload into space.
Having a third drone ship, ” A Shortfall Of Gravitas”, will help in making sure that a landing vessel is constantly available in Florida for SpaceX missions. Even assuming for no delays on the launch, the process of deploying the drone, recovering it, and then returning it to the port takes as much as an entire week to complete.
Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/02/14/new-drone-ship-under-construction-for-spacex-rocket-landings/
