Coolest thing to happen since Curiosity's landing. SpaceX Flacon 9 retro burn.

[Calvin19 0]

http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-picture-of-falcon-9-stage-soft-landing-2014-4

I can't sit still in anticipation for the video. So awesome.

[quade 3]

Also see;
http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov

I give bonus points to Musk for having a video drone directed by someone with a better eye for such things and making a lander that looks like my childhood fantasies of rocket landings, but he's not the only one out there doing rocket powered descent.

True, these two projects are for very different purposes.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Calvin19 0]

That's pretty sweet too.
Yeah different purposes.

I'm taken by the scale of the Falcon 9. It's such an awesome project. It's a full gorram rocket! When they get it to come back and land on the pad that will be such a huge accomplishment.

SSTO would be cooler still, but the tyranny of the rocket equation makes this the best existing option.

[grue 1]

Calvin19

http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-picture-of-falcon-9-stage-soft-landing-2014-4

I can't sit still in anticipation for the video. So awesome.

Elon Musk is playing Kerbal Space Program writ large, with real money

cavete terrae.

[quade 3]

Calvin19

It's a full gorram rocket!

Yeppers. There is no denying it looks friggen awesome.

Technically though, I believe what Morpheous is doing is more difficult due to the shortened pendulum. They're probably about on par as far as in-air navigation goes, but Morpheous is also being designed with total autonomy in landing site selection in mind whereas Falcon knows for a fact the condition of the landing sight is going to be completely flat.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Calvin19 0]

It's not insanely complex, there are more complex mechanical systems out there for sure, but Falcon has another difficult issue.

The big thing is the burn timing, propellant mass predictions, and 70-100% throttle-ability of the Merlin engines. It's a very narrow mass window they have to hit or the engine can't throttle low enough to touch down. After the boost phase and retro phase the rocket has to be the perfect mass or it can't do it and the range safety officer has to make the call.

[SethInMI 145]

Apparently the video was partly/largely corrupted. SpaceX is offering the raw video if anyone wants to have a go at repairing it. You can see what they have to work with and what they managed to recover here:

http://www.spacex.com/news/2014/04/29/first-stage-landing-video

It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

[faulknerwn 36]

Its very cool stuff. And even cooler there are a bunch of skydivers working for the company :-) I love hearing the stories from the folks who helped make it happen.