Posted on 10/02/2011 8:06:59 AM PDT by Dagnabitt
There is a practical limit to how much you can bring back with parachutes. Most boosters would not survive an off-axis landing. Powered landings are controlled, a parachute landing is not. Keep in mind that this thing weighs 5-10% of what it did going up -- it will lose foward velocity pretty quick and won't fall all that fast.
When you drag expensive aerospace hardware out of the sea you aren't reusing it, you are salvaging it.
Ok, stay with me. How about parachutes until just before touchdown, just seems like a waste to haul all that fuel up and a waste not to use the atmosphere for something. Since I know I don’t know it all, it must be that others have done the math, and the extra weight (and expense) of the parachute subsystem is greater than the extra weight (and expense) of the fuel necessary to slow it down all the way. It goes against my gut feeling, but if so many different companies are following that model, it must be the case.
BTTT
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