[ExI] Rocket lander control systems

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
BillK via extropy-chat

> _______________________________________________


>...I don't think you appreciate just how big these things are!  :)

>...300 metric tons is the dry weight of Stage1 booster.
He wants to put about 3,000 metric tons of fuel in it.
The Stage2 Starship on top is not quite as big as that again, but it goes to
orbit.

I'm looking at some spaceX stats.
<http://spacelaunchreport.com/bfr.html>


BillK
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Ja I misread the first post, my apologies.  

I don't think as big as Elon Musk does.  

Guess that's why he's rich and Im not.

That notion of catching the first stage in a net is growing on me.  I can
see  something like that working out and possibly having some advantages
over a feet-first landing: your payload ratio might be better, even at the
expense of longer turn-around times.  Hard to say: it sounds like an
interesting portion of the envelope that hasn't been explored.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were working on something like this back in
the 1950s and 60s when so much innovative rocket science was taking place,
but they didn't really have the control systems in those days which were up
to the task.  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