Following two oh-so-close attempts to land a Falcon 9 rocket on a drone barge out in the ocean, SpaceX is ready to turn to solid ground for its next attempt to prove out a reusable rocket.

While the barge was seen as a way to make the landing safer, since it happens out in the middle of the ocean, it also may lead to more instability in the landing. SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell tells Defense News:

"Just purely the boat moving, even in a low sea state, it's hard to imagine that vehicle is going to stay vertical. That vehicle is big and tall, compared to the itty-bity-greater-than-a-football-field-size ship."

SpaceX will test the new technique in a July 22, 2015 launch from the Vandenberg AFB Space Launch Complex 4 in California. The company plans to install a fail-safe in case the descent starts to go wrong: it will just blow up the Falcon 9 with an auto-destruct feature.

"It's a lot harder to think about blowing up that rocket when you're going up and it has a payload on board," Shotwell said. "But when it's coming back, if things look wonky, blow it up."

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Source: Defense News

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