A Revolutionary New Concept | Transterrestrial Musings

The Europeans are thinking about building a rocket that retrofires and lands vertically. Eric Berger brings the snark.

Is this even possible? "They are looking at landing a rocket by using retro-propulsion, where the vehicle is decelerated by generating thrust in the opposite direction to its motion. They will also examine how to steer a vehicle during landing."
— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) March 17, 2020

That's just crazy talk! How can it do that in a vacuum, with nothing to push against?! And steer a rocket backwards? What a boondoggle!
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) March 17, 2020

What's particularly hilarious is the link right below to a story about the latest Falcon 9 launch failing to land on the ship. Which is in fact big news, because it happens so rarely.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) March 17, 2020

2 thoughts on “A Revolutionary New Concept”

It is really weird to not mention SpaceX and Falcon 9 in their story on reusing first stage rockets.

Europe sits under a denser part of the Earth’s mantle with slightly higher gravity and thus their space-time continuum runs slightly slower than the rest of us. Sending someone to /snarc them from the future is hardly fair.

ESA – To timidly go where others have boldly gone before…

Comments are closed.

2 thoughts on “A Revolutionary New Concept”

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!