| > Just because it looks cool is not a reason to do it. I'm pretty certain that 'looks cool' has nothing to do with it. SN10 had to be moved away from the assembly point because SN11, SN12, etc are close behind. They needed the space. Why wasn't SN10 further away? SpaceX is moving fast, and moving these building-sized craft around is slow. SpaceX has a many years of experience in landing rockets. Perhaps more directly, they have a lot of experience in failing to land rockets. To that end, they've use a kind of 'fail safe' methodology, where for most of the approach, the vehicle's trajectory is toward a safe, low-value spot. For example, during the booster return of the CRS-16 mission in 2018, there was a problem, so the booster automatically didn't translate back toward its nominal landing pad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFdep0qCmYA In that case, the problem ended up not being severe enough to cause a crash. |