Elon Musk Wants To Land Three Rockets At The Same Time

Now that it has a few successful rocket landings under its belt, including two on land, SpaceX is moving on to the next ambitious goal: landing more than one rocket "almost" simultaneously. This surprising revelation was made, and confirmed by Elon Musk himself, when the space travel company was reported to be seeking approval for two additional landing pads on Florida's Space Coast in order to indeed land the three rockets of a Falcon Heavy rocket within just minutes of each other.

It's not that SpaceX plans to launch three rockets all at once as well. Actually, it does, but not separately and not in the way you might think. The request is being done in preparation for the maiden launch of the company's Falcon Heavy, which, as the name so clearly indicates, is SpaceX's biggest, heaviest, and most ambitious rocket in production. It's so heavy that it will require three rockets to actually launch it. And it's those three rockets that SpaceX wants back in one piece. If one rocket were already expensive, imagine the cost of three.

Still, it's a long shot considering SpaceX hasn't even launched the Falcon Heavy yet. It might do so later this year at long last, though no date has been set yet. It probably also depends on whether its request for the Space Coast landing pads gets approved.

That said, there is also a backup plan if the application falls through. At least for the immediate future. SpaceX can land the rockets on water, like it did with most of its successful Falcon 9 landings. It will, of course, need two more robotic barges as well as permission to have those floating. SpaceX plans on doing that anyway.

If SpaceX manages to pull off both launch and landing, especially a ground one for the latter, it would be yet another historic accomplishment for the company. Even better once it actually starts to reuse those rockets as well.

SOURCE: @Elon Musk