Heh what do you know! We are living in the Future.
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Donāt lose hope! For Falcon Heavy launches, the core stage will be going too fast to boost back to the launch site, so they will probably have to use the drone ship to land, weather permitting, on FH launches. The boosters detach early and should have no problem landing like in their video.
I also suspect that If/when their f9 upgrades come through and they can begin to land GEO launches that they will attempt it on the barge. However, I donāt know how much dV their upgrades will give them, nor how much extra it costs to boost back to pad. So that is complete speculation. 
It just seems applicable because if it costs too much fuel now, then itās difficult to do it(obviously). If itās difficult then any upgrades will probably only just make it possible for a landing attempt, and just possible would probably be on the barge. It will also be moving faster than when a normal LEO launch separates, which adds to the complexities. Itās an educated guess.
I gotta say Iām impressed by what SpaceX is doing. No other company has managed to recreate my entire KSP experience in such a short video. 
Looking forward to the next attempt.
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So in about 12 hours another launch is up. Notably, this might be the very last non reusable flight ever. All launches from here on out are either reusable and light enough or v1.2 of the rocket which can reuse even when putting satellites into GTO.
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T - 7 min. A good time to hop in. 
Maybe they will finally NOT abort while Iām watching.
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Source on this core being the last of F9R 1.1?
Edit: I watched this while in thermo today, I thought it was fitting 
Itās not the last F9R 1.1, just the last F9 1.1. Thereās still like ~4 launches to go before the F9-R / F9R 1.2 (we donāt yet know how they are going to call it) will be ready, but all of those are light enough to try landing. Once the next version is running, it will be capable of (trying a) landing every time.
I checked to see if I could find primary sources, but alas I only found tertiary ones. But AFAIK that is the current state.
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Time for some updates! First, an image of the last landing attempt:
Now, on to launches: I have nothing new to offer right now except for the pad abort test of the Crew Dragon, due in 2 days. You will be able to watch live via the NASA stream. Currently weather is 70% go.
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Apparently the dummy is not called Buster as previously rumoured 
ā¦ http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/05/04/5-things-know-about-spacexs-pad-abort-test
Iām excited to see how this test works out
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You can watch the test live on NASA TV tomorrow morning, assuming the time works for you 
āThe test window opens at 7 a.m. EDT May 6 and extends until 2:30 p.m. EDT into the afternoon.ā
More Info Here
NASA TV
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Test is now scheduled for 9am so about 2 hours from the time of this post.
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3 minutes to go! Good luck SpaceX Dummy!
Edit: Success!
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OKā¦ for the sake of the (questionable) sanity of the people who will one day try to land that thing, I hope the engines can throttle down lower than 70%. That thing took off.
Iām kind of disappointed, though. Iāve come to expect explosions from SpaceX experiments.
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Well that was fun. Beautiful shots of it detaching and rotating. Some points Iām a bit worried about though:
- Every time the parachute reefs the capsule flipped all over the place. That doesnāt seem to be overly fun for future astronauts.
- It came down pretty close to shore it looks like.
- It swims really well. Nice and upright, pretty high above the water. Did you guys see that within 2 minutes the first boat was there? They must have had a head start!
They can, all the way down to 0% I believe. But in the case of an emergency speed counts, so 100% it is!
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Yeah I was taken aback by how fast it shot up, but if one has the choice of getting exploded or getting some G-force induced injuries, one would opt for the non-explody option.
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I missed it.
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Oh absolutely! For the launch escape function you want to shoot off at the speed of sound if you have the option (helps outrace shockwaves).
Those are the same engines that will be used for soft landings, though, which is when you really donāt want to have a 1.8g gap in throttle control (as that tends to result in lightly scorched droneships). Well, I want the unmanned landers to have a 1.8g gap in throttle control as that gives a better chance of explosions, but if youāre aboard a manned one you definitively donāt.
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If the capsule hadnāt rotated as quickly as it did after separation from the adapter, Iām sure it would have been much smoother. That was a pretty serious tumble, and the drogues couldnāt damp it out in the short time that they were deployed.
I watched the Orion pad abort test and they have a stage in their abort sequence where the capsule is rotated into a stable orientation before releasing the drogues.
The irony here is that the Dragon capsule is supposed to be capable of a powered landing, with the chute system as a backup. After watching this test, Iād be praying hard for the powered descent system to work.
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6Gsā¦Iād certainly rather black out than be engulfed in the fireball below me
Max acceleration was 6X gravity, altitude 1187m, lateral distance 1202m and velocity 155 m/s. Main chutes deployed 970m.
ā Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2015
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