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Wake up sheeple (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
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[–] 46 points 4 months ago (4 children)

The Russian system has a braking rocket that fires at the very last second to soften up the landing. On one early Soyuz mission, this rocket didn't fire, and the solo cosmonaut suffered substantial injuries from the landing.

The Orion capsule hits the water at the final parachute speed of 20-30 mph without injuring the crew. But as you state, they also have to design the capsule for flotation and egress in potentially rough sea state.

Boeing Starliner is designed for a land landing, but it uses deployable air bags instead of a braking rocket. It's not clear that Starliner will ever fly again after the RCS thruster problems.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    It's such a weird flip of philosophy given we've all heard the classic story of the US spending millions on developing pens that write in space while the Soviet Union just issued pencils.

    Choosing a retroburst system over trusty parachutes over water is wack, but as someone else pointed out it's more to do with their Navy than anything else. Plus knowing Russia's current capabilities, they'd probably forget to factor in the water being frozen or something stupid like that.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago*

    That story is apocryphal.

    Pencils aren't suitable in space because the last thing you want are little wood and graphite shavings floating around the capsule.

    Both the US and Russia used grease pens.

    The Fischer space pen was developed by a private company with no public investment and was marketed to the government and public.

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