Louisiana Shipyard Building Drone Landing Ship for SpaceX Rocket

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.

Autonomous spaceport drone ship. Thrusters repurposed from deep sea oil rigs hold position within 3m even in a storm. pic.twitter.com/wJFOnGdt9w

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2014

Base is 300 ft by 100 ft, with wings that extend width to 170 ft. Will allow refuel & rocket flyback in future. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2014

“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.

Grid fins are stowed on ascent and then deploy on reentry for “x-wing” style control. Each fin moves independently for pitch/yaw/roll.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2014

The flight grid fins look like the ones on this test we did, but larger: https://t.co/gTaURQQeyx — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2014

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