Just Read the Instructions

Love just about everything about SpaceX.  I have just discovered another reason to love them.  

As part of their technological ecosystem, SpaceX built a fleet of autonomous spaceport drone ships.  Basically, they are flat decked ships which can be prepositioned for recovery of launch vehicles with vertical landings on the deck.  

Double click to enlarge.

From Wikipedia.

An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is an ocean-going vessel derived from a deck barge, outfitted with station-keeping engines and a large landing platform and is autonomously controlled when on station for a landing. Construction of such ships was commissioned by aerospace company SpaceX to allow recovery of launch vehicle first stages at sea for missions that do not carry enough fuel to return to the launch site after boosting spacecraft onto an orbital or interplanetary trajectory.

This morning I am reading an account of a recent launch, including the recovery on one of the drone ships. the Just Read the Instructions.  Can't explain why I love the name, I just do.

SpaceX has three operational drone ships: Just Read the Instructions (II) (JRTI) and A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG), operating in the Atlantic for launches from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), operating in the Pacific for supporting missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base. JRTI operated in the Pacific Ocean for Vandenberg Air Force Base launches from 2016 to 2019 before leaving the Port of Los Angeles in August 2019.