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> hen when they proposed propulsive landing, some NASA experts in the field thought it’d fail. I know one NASA GNC guy who said drone ship landing is impossible
by jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
> hen when they proposed propulsive landing, some NASA experts in the field thought it’d fail. I know one NASA GNC guy who said drone ship landing is impossible.
Propulsive landing was not a spacex innovation. They simply picked back up the research agenda of Delta Clipper.
- Robotbeat 6y agoThere is one aspect that SpaceX absolutely pioneered: supersonic retropropulsion. NASA was actually planning on testing it as it's needed for landing heavy payloads on Mars, but SpaceX figured it out for "free."
- hef19898 6y agoTo be honest, SpaceX got a ton of VC money on top of a ton of NASA money on top of a ton of government launch money. Not saying SpaceX isn't impressive, but without published results it is impossible to tell how economic their tech is, how expensive development and so on.