[LostLocalMan]

Sounds like they are not planning on testing the booster catch yet, I wonder what's stopping them

[Me1000]

That's correct, there will be no catch attempt this launch. They're going to simulate a landing by attempting to do soft land it in the Gulf of Mexico.

The reason is pretty straightforward: this vehicle has never flown before and a lot can go wrong. There is a lot of ground equipment including propellant tanks very close to the launch tower. If anything goes wrong hundreds of tons of metal + propellant is going to cause a lot of damage, and they'd likely end up having to rebuild a large portion of their launch area. Best to see how the booster behaves first before risking all that infrastructure.

[Aeolun]

It can’t be that hard to not land it in your launch area right? Can’t they have a separate land and crash area (preferably separated by a few tens of kilometers)?

[hadlock]

The falcon 9 did several "hover over water" landings in the ocean to prove out safe landing on... land, and also to alay fears that it might miss it's target and hit a population center. Even now, falcon 9 do a ballistic reentry that would hit the water, and then propulsively adjust the landing target towards land, after the engines have safely started.

Given how much larger, and how much additional fuel is onboard, it's not surprising that they're following a similar strategy this early in the program.

[samwillis]

The hardware at the launch site is hundreds of millions of dollars (or more). They won't want to test that till they are sure they can fly the thing.

The Flacon 9 did a fair few simulated landing over water before they tried on land or risked and barge.

[stetrain]

Need to verify that they can successfully launch and guide it back to a specific point before they aim a guided missile at US mainland.

[starbase]

Risk of damaging their only launchpad, I would assume.

[ceejayoz]

They haven’t launched and recovered it at all yet, have they? Presumably they want to test out to sea where it won’t blow up the only launch tower if it comes in hot.

[olex]

The booster has not yet flown, no. The closest it came was a all-engines static fire (during which 2 out of 33 engines didn't fire, but it was still enough of a success to continue with the program apparently).