Fantastic photos and videos of SpaceX booster landing - including rocketcam

[LongTomH]

This is from Dr. Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog: Spectacular Drone Ship (and Rocketcam!) View of SpaceX Booster Landing. You get two great videos, a great pic (a bit large to be posted here!) and Phil's commentary:

The booster successfully lofted the rest of the rocket into orbit on April 8, 2016; on top was a Dragon capsule loaded with equipment for the astronauts on the International Space Station. It berthed with ISS two days later.

Less than nine minute after launch, the booster flipped over, slowed, and descended down to the Atlantic Ocean. Waiting for it was the Of Course I Still Love You, the autonomous drone ship. The booster landing was the first successful touchdown at sea after several attempts (a landing on land was done in December).

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The question now is, is this worth it? It costs about $60 million to build that booster, but less than a million to fuel it up (plus the costs to refurbish it and all that), so reusing it is a huge savings over building a new one each time. But did it come back in good enough shape to recycle? We’ll see; that’s the next big news I’m hoping to hear from SpaceX. Stay tuned.