[ExI] Rocket lander control systems

[BillK]

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 at 02:07, spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> 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
> _______________________________________________


As I understand it, he wants it to return like his earlier boosters,
but to land back at the launch tower, standing on the base fins and
using the launch tower arm to hold the rocket in position.
So not really 'catching' it.


BillK