[ExI] Rocket lander control systems

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> 



> _______________________________________________


>...A human-controlled flight into a net is too risky and too slow (humans
can't react fast enough to control something that unforgiving.)  I think we
could do this now however.  spike



Something occurred to me.  Instead of the towers supporting the net at the
four corners, we could use a natural feature such as a mountain, carve out
an opening of the shape and size such that the net could be mounted on the
ground on the sides of the opening.  It would require a lot of earth-moving
but we are good at that.

This idea wouldn't apply at Cape Canaveral: there are no mountains or even
hills nearby.  But we could do something like that for launches out of
Vandenberg.  I know the place where such a thing can be constructed, where
the net supports all the way around would be on solid ground.  It is within
20 miles of VAFB Launch Pad 6 and close enough to the coast there isn't a
lotta problem with Nervous Nellies objecting to huge flying rocket stages
coming down to a hole in the ground just a little ways up the street.  That
might work.

spike