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8 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Could Dragon ever be caught in a net like the fairings?  Or is it just too heavy?

Probably too heavy...the Wikipedia article says it's something like 9 metric tons with the trunk. Even without the trunk, you'd need an impractically large and heavy net.

Edited by RealKerbal3x
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12 minutes ago, Raven Industries said:

What's the touchdown speed for the Dragon Capsule? If it's low enough, perhaps you could just land on the recovery ship's helipad..

You just need a "helicopter" big enough to come with it's own landing pad...

 

Hey, Elon... build one of these!!!!!  :sticktongue:

Edited by Just Jim
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Relevant:


Also:

 

1 hour ago, Raven Industries said:

What's the touchdown speed for the Dragon Capsule? If it's low enough, perhaps you could just land on the recovery ship's helipad..

Soyuz needs retros and Starliner needs airbags... turns out that last bump is a doozy. That’s why SpaceX was originally thinking propulsive landings, better precision and a much softer touchdown. 

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2 hours ago, Raven Industries said:

What's the touchdown speed for the Dragon Capsule? If it's low enough, perhaps you could just land on the recovery ship's helipad..

 

37 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Soyuz needs retros and Starliner needs airbags... turns out that last bump is a doozy. That’s why SpaceX was originally thinking propulsive landings, better precision and a much softer touchdown

I watched the Starliner landing the other day, and I thought the airbags were a pretty good idea. But I can't deny it would look amazingly cool to see a dragon capsule do a propulsive landing on Of Course I Still Love You  :cool:

Edited by Just Jim
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5 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I still think they should have kept the propulsive landing idea. It allows easier reuse (as there's no salt water to worry about) and it's just really darn cool.

Much harder to get it certified by NASA. One option might be parachutes and then use the super drakos to slow down to safe landing speeds kind of like Soyuz uses but liquid fuel.
However not sure this is much easier to certify. 

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I think there may still be a case for development of the propulsive landing potential of the Crew Dragon capsule, but no need to rush it since Crew Dragon could be superseded by Starship and if so that development time and money will probably be a waste. 

...same as the SLS amirite :cool:

if Crew Dragon was still viable to run post Starship then they could keep improving it sure. 

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Me thinks, they should start using reusable Crew Dragon do deliver payloads and prove the crewable capsule propulsive landing.

Anyway what do they loose? Just a tonne of "equipment from ISS",

But I still can't remember even hop tests of the Dragon rocket landing, say, dropped from a plane.

Edited by kerbiloid
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7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Me thinks, they should start using reusable Crew Dragon do deliver payloads and prove the crewable capsule propulsive landing.

The capsule would need legs though. So they would either have to certify it with legs from the start or modify each one of them after the first flight (since crew is going to fly only once on each of them). As cool as that would be I'd rather see them focus on Starship instead of retrofitting Dragon to do a cool hoverslam trick over the land (besides, there's very little R&D value in that since they already proved they can recover things propulsively). They are making enough money landing it in the sea anyway. There's probably little need to minimize recovery costs or the savings wouldn't be that significant.

It seems to me that doing this would be just a costly, albeit very spectacular, flex on other companies.

Edited by Wjolcz
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