The article mentions that the water landing requires less fuel to return the rocket because it doesn't have to spend fuel overcoming its initial ballistic trajectory. In the water landing scenario, how far away from the launchpad is the landing barge? I'm wondering about the economics of launching from a site where your first stage trajectory is entirely overland, to avoid the complications of landing on a barge that's being tossed in the sea. Though it might be hard to find such a site in U.S. territory that's both near the equator and sparsely populated.
I found a reference that the barge was 320 km downrange in the earlier tests. The Bahamas look to be an appropriate distance from Florida, although to the southeast of Cape Canaveral. From SpaceX's planned Texas spaceport, there's nothing at that range but gulf.
Hypothetically, I imagine they could anchor a stable ocean platform out there if they find it's easier than the barge. No idea if it actually would be easier than the barge though.
It's important that the trajectory be fail-safe in terms of avoiding land - if the falcon were to explode early on it could sprinkle debris over a large area around the intended landing zone. So it'd have to be a small unpopulated island - a barge is probably easier. If they need more area or stability I'd think it's relatively easy to expand the barge or add more mass/sea anchors underneath.
I was wondering about that too. It would be cool if they could launch from somewhere south of San Antonio, TX on the water, and land in Florida so it doesn't fly over land mass for safety reasons.
Launch abort locations for Shuttle launches from Canaveral included Shannon in Ireland and the Azores off Spain. Both would seem ideal for recovery of eastbound first stages.
