4 ms·
In my mind, the multiple complex reorientations while falling at terminal velocity — with no plan B — just seems particularly harrowing..
by doomlaser 6y ago
In my mind, the multiple complex reorientations while falling at terminal velocity — with no plan B — just seems particularly harrowing..
- Laremere 6y agoDoing it once is harrowing. Even doing it the tenth or the hundredth time might be harrowing. Doing it the thousandth time is starting to get old. Doing it the ten thousandth time is business as usual. The place to improve from is not as good as you may think, "On the Demo-2 mission, NASA has estimated a 1-in-276 chance of losing the crew at some point." Once you have full re-usability, you can fly rockets several orders of magnitude more times. When you're flying that often, you have the ability to work out the kinks. If instead you limit to what today feels the safest, you might limit yourself from full re-usability and eventually being much safer. If you want to still go for full re-usability, adding a backup system might actually make things more dangerous: It's another thing that has failure modes. Redundancy can be a double edged sword.
- anticensor 6y agoPlan B is one more orbit and try again...
- doomlaser 6y agoOnce you've entered the atmosphere, you're falling to earth whether you like it or not. As it stands now, you must execute every move in the procedure or you crash into the ground at 120mph and explode.