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I disagree. Falcon 9 is an orbital booster, but only the second stage goes to orbit. The hard part is surviving re-entry, the first stage only barely requires a
by Tuna-Fish 3y ago
I disagree. Falcon 9 is an orbital booster, but only the second stage goes to orbit. The hard part is surviving re-entry, the first stage only barely requires a heat shield.
Dragon would qualify, except it lands on the ocean, so not "US soil".
- kragen 3y agoapparently the hard part is getting the control systems and landing legs simultaneously lightweight enough and reliable enough, if i correctly understand spacex's long history of failing to land rockets (which i may not, since all i know is a small sample of what they've published) agreed about dragon. those fuckers do orbit!
- Tuna-Fish 3y agoThe hard part for landing a suborbital rocket vertically is that. The hard part of landing anything from orbit is still definitely the re-entry.
- kragen 3y agooh, sorry, you're right. a few rocks do survive re-entry every day without the benefit of any engineering at all, but they have a very, very low success rate