Louisiana Shipyard Building Drone Landing Ship for SpaceX Rocket

Louisiana Shipyard Building Drone Landing Ship for SpaceX Rocket

Mike Schuler
Total Views: 445
November 25, 2014

The so-called “autonomous spaceport drone ship” under construction at a Louisiana shipyard. Photo credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk has revealed that his SpaceX space transport company is currently developing an “autonomous spaceport drone ship” at a shipyard in Louisiana that will act as a high seas landing pad for their reusable Falcon 9 rockets.

In a series of tweets, Elon Musk revealed that the barge-like vessel will be built using thrusters repurposed from old oil rigs, with a landing pad measuring 300 feet by 100 feet.

“We actually have a huge platform that’s being constructed in a shipyard in Louisiana right now,” Musk said October 24th during on-stage interview at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to a report by Spacenews.com. “We’re going to try and land on that on the next flight.”

Additional details about the shipyard building the platform, or the platform itself, have not been disclosed.

If all goes as planned, the Falcon 9 rocket we be capable of landing vertically on the platform and then reused in future flights.

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