/sci/ - Science & Math

What went right?

>>9796302
>You are right, it is actually way harder to make a jet land vertically than a rocket. Also, this still doesn't change the fact the landing isn't the hard part of making rockets reusable, and all the additional hardware and fuel consumption in making them land vertically is not worth it.
Wow that is entirely wrong. You do realize that the Shuttle didn't do what SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing, right? They're landing the booster, while the Space Shuttle is doing the equivalent of landing the the capsule. They're working on recovering everything thats not the shuttle in pic related, as well as the capsules i.e. the entire launch system. The Shuttle ONLY recovered the Shuttle and did it poorly. The Falcon family already has the capability to recover everything but the small second stage, and theres no reason that the next in line won't recover that either.
You're also completely wrong about VTOL jets being harder than rockets. Jets like the Harrier can sit on their thrust for minutes at a time, and can abort to let the engine cool down and extend hover time. A rocket can't do that. It has to achieve velocity 0 precisely before altitude 0 - too soon or too late and you get an RUD, it has to accommodate for a radically changing thrust to weight ratio, it has to do it far far far less responsive engines and it needs to adjust the entire burn based on ever-changing environmental factors. It also can't abort a landing for another attempt and it has to do all this completely autonomously.
>>9796381
You replied to a post talking about how much ground actual people covered.
>Apollo 17, which was a crewed mission, covered 35km in a total of 22hrs of EVA time, more than any other rover with the sole exception of Opportunity, which did it over a period of 14 years.
>Yeah but people can't go that far because their air is limited
What the hell are you talking about?