Re:SpaceX Grasshopper Flies High
by InclinedPlane on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @10:25AM
(#5595288)
Perhaps on Mars, unlikely on Earth. With our dense atmosphere a vehicle like a mostly empty Falcon 9 first stage is going to have a fairly low terminal velocity, in the low hundreds of km/s range. Slowing down from that speed to a controlled hover/landing is pretty easy. The cost/benefit on Mars might be different though, since the atmosphere is thinner.
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| on HN ]
> in the low hundreds of km/s range
I think you might mean m/s? low hundreds of km/s is very supersonic. ;)
Re:SpaceX Grasshopper Flies High
by InclinedPlane on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @03:20PM
(#5597338)
What am I, a physicist? Jeez, boffing a few orders of magnitude like that is pretty bad, and it's too late to edit.
I meant kph, which was HOPEFULLY obvious from context.
I'll just leave this here: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2679