Comment on Wake up sheeple
bluesheep@sh.itjust.works 1 day agoBoth approaches have technical challenges. Returning to land requires a slower landing speed (although as a percentage of the starting velocity of a spacecraft its a pretty insignificant difference) and landing on the sea requires the carrying of flotation devices and designing a capsule with buoyancy in mind.
Does landing on the sea really require that much more braking when compared to land? Sure water has some give but I’ve always understood that, from a large enough hight, due to surface tension landing on water is the same as landing on concrete. But I ain’t no physicist and by no means of the imagination a rocket scientist so I might as well be very wrong here lmao
turmacar@lemmy.world 1 day ago
One of the advantages of water is even if your target area is measured in square miles it’s all roughly at sea level. If you miss your target area on land you have to account for that and trees and wildlife and hopefully not buildings.
Like the above said, you can do either, it’s kind of a wash. But a water based landing does simplify some things.