565
Land where (thelemmy.club)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago

Also

We did land on land

For like forty years we did that exclusively

It's called the Space Shuttle and it's pretty cool

[-] bluemellophone@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago

Ignoring that the Soyuz is a more traditional capsule that does land on land, with timed rockets to slow their descent just before impact.

Let’s just say landing on water is better, based on the medical injuries different astronauts have suffered riding home on the Soyuz. Several American astronauts have experienced bruising and joint/back pain from the hard “bone-jarring” landing.

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

That's true. Honestly I remember being a kid, learning about the Soyuz recovery system and being shocked. A 20mph collision with the ground (without the braking SRs, 5mph with them) doesn't sound like much, but it can still ring your bell pretty good.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

True.

While the USSR has a history of ignoring human safety, I suspect a large factor for landing on, well, land is the fact they had very few ports open year-round, unlike the US

[-] bluemellophone@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Another commenter said that capsules are primarily designed for their abort landings. The US launches crewed missions from Florida, so the abort landing options are mostly in the Atlantic (on water landing). Russia launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, so their abort landing options are mostly over Northern Asia (on land landing)

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I saw that comment after writing this one and I agree that that's moreblikely then mine. That being said, I think my previous comment is at least a tertiary benefit, so I'll leave it up

this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
565 points (99.1% liked)

Science Memes

20245 readers
2069 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS