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Wellll, it's going to be a lot sooner than Mars. They inked a contract recently with the USAF to use a pad for landing. I don't know when that's supposed to h
by tsotha 12y ago
Wellll, it's going to be a lot sooner than Mars. They inked a contract recently with the USAF to use a pad for landing. I don't know when that's supposed to happen, but the barge was never more than a stopgap until they could secure a spot on land and work out all the regulatory concerns.
- grecy 12y ago> Wellll, it's going to be a lot sooner than Mars For sure, but even then they could use some kind of tower or arm on their earth-based landing pad to "catch" it if they wanted. In theory they could even have the pad move some amount..... If they wanted to of course, which they don't.
- tsotha 12y agoI would be shocked if any of that was actually easier than getting the landing right. Vertical landing without special arms or pads has been done a dozen times by now - DC-X, Armadillo, JAXA's RTV, Project Morpheus, and especially SpaceX's F9R... that's just off the top of my head. The part that hadn't been done is getting from a fast, high altitude trajectory to the landing spot. Which they've managed to do.