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Re:SpaceX Grasshopper Flies High by Florin_Andrei on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @05:48PM (#5598217)
> All that hassle to reduce the terminal velocity by a couple hundred miles an hour.

That's the TLDR. The delta-vee from the parachute is not worth the trouble.

Re:SpaceX Grasshopper Flies High by mikeash on Tuesday April 23, 2013 @06:28PM (#5598382)
Or put it another way, parachutes are generally less effective than using a system you already have for other purposes. A parachute probably beats a rocket engine if your only task is landing, but when you already have the rocket engine, you're better off using it for landing than building a completely separate landing system.

In short, same basic reason why we use wings and wheels to land airplanes rather than dropping them from a parachute when they reach their destination.