Although the synchronous landing of the Falcon Heavy side boosters looks impressive, they seem to have traveled a long way back to the landing zones.
How does this compare with Falcon 9 launches with land landing?
Would it have been more efficient in this case to land the side boosters on additional droneships?
I'm interested in whether the amount of droneships was a bottleneck here, or if the way it was done was actually the best option.
Also, are there any plans known for possible multi-droneship missions?
Update:
- Good point by NPSF3000: Elon Musk has estimated the costs for landing the side boosters while expending the core to be around \$95M. This comes along with ~10% less performance compared to fully expended, which would cost $150M.
- SpaceX is actually building a second droneship on the east coast do do exactly that. Its name will be A Shortfall of Gravitas.