[flountown]

Are there any articles or press out there that describe the stabilization tech used on the barge?

A lot of the things when looking through Google seem to focus on the challenges of guiding the rocket but not stabilizing the platform.

I guess it tends to be a non-issue since it seems their plan all along was landing it on land, but I'd be really interested to see the design story that went into the barge.

[mbell]

There is nothing special about the barge stabilization, it's off the shelf marine tech. A few azimuth thrusters controlled by a station keeping system.

The only unusual thing about it is that the azimuth thrusters are a lot more powerful than would normally be put on a barge that size to give it better positional control in rough seas.

[flountown]

I know this was a few days ago, but I forgot to check back. The reason I ask, is that this company http://seakeeper.com/ used to be a customer of mine. It seems like an extremely cool concept and I know it works for smaller vessels and the company is currently developing larger solutions for the government and oil industries.

[mbell]

This is what the SpaceX barge uses:

https://www.thrustmaster.net/out-drive-propulsion-unit/porta...

[sparkzilla]

There are two kinds of stabilization required: Side-to-side, which would use azimuth thrusters, and up-down which can be implemented with SWATH: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-waterplane-area_twin_hull

[Swannie]

My question isn't really about stabilising the platform, as others have mentioned that should be off the shelf marine tech.

But this isn't exactly landing a helicopter on a ship/platform. I'm expecting a rocket to be a fair bit heavier... as that weight comes down, unless it's perfectly on centre, you now have a large force acting to unbalance the platform. Whilst X-Y may be stabilised, the pitch and the yaw is going to be affected by that weight.