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The Russian system has a braking rocket that fires at the very last second to soften up the landing. On one early Soyuz mission, this rocket didn’t fire, and the solo cosmonaut suffered substantial injuries from the landing.

The Orion capsule hits the water at the final parachute speed of 20-30 mph without injuring the crew. But as you state, they also have to design the capsule for flotation and egress in potentially rough sea state.

Boeing Starliner is designed for a land landing, but it uses deployable air bags instead of a braking rocket. It’s not clear that Starliner will ever fly again after the RCS thruster problems.

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Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
It’s such a weird flip of philosophy given we’ve all heard the classic story of the US spending millions on developing pens that write in space while the Soviet Union just issues pencils.

Choosing a retroburst system over trusty parachutes is wack.

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- bss03@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  classic story of the US spending millions on developing pens that write in space while the Soviet Union just issued pencils
  
  You used “story”, so I’ll assume you know this is mostly untrue, but for any of the lucky 10k that hasn’t heard: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen#Uses_in_the_U.S._…
  
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- UnspecificGravity@piefed.social ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That story is apocryphal.
  
  Pencils aren’t suitable in space because the last thing you want are little wood and graphite shavings floating around the capsule.
  
  Both the US and Russia used grease pens.
  
  The Fischer space pen was developed by a private company with no public investment and was marketed to the government and public.
  
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- AMoralNihilist@feddit.uk ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Not so much Navy as geography and allies’ geography.
  
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