• HeroicBillyBishop@lemmy.ca
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    38 minutes ago

    …ok, but what is the post getting at?

    Like what conspiracy is this supporting?

    That they are more easily faked on water?

    • hansolo@lemmy.today
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      19 minutes ago

      Yes, because the area gets a no-fly zone and navy ships go to get the capsule, it makes it “easy” to fake because the government controls the situation. Yes, this ignores a lot of other independently verifiable data, because that doesn’t confirm biases. Yes, it ignores all the Soyuz landings over land. Yes, it ignores the facts that the Soviets and Russians do and did the same thing, as if a highly-planned re-entry might just happen in anyone’s rye field. Yes, it’s stupid. Yes, it’s on purpose.

  • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social
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    14 hours ago

    Russian capsules have returned to land since their very first launches.

    The decision has more to do with geopolitics than physics. Russia does not have a robust Navy with access to equatorial waters on which to land a spacecraft, the US does. Given the historical accuracy of landing a capsule it is actually a hell of a lot easier to drive a big ship to the eventual location than it is to drive a big truck into the middle of a desert. The reason western nations return capsules to the sea is because its easier to recover them there.

    Both approaches have technical challenges. Returning to land requires a slower landing speed (although as a percentage of the starting velocity of a spacecraft its a pretty insignificant difference) and landing on the sea requires the carrying of flotation devices and designing a capsule with buoyancy in mind.

    In other words this post is completely inaccurate.

    • mimavox@piefed.social
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      4 hours ago

      Imagine surviving a whole ass moon flight just to perish at sea because no one comes to get you…

    • mkwt@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      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.

      • Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip
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        10 hours ago

        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.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      13 hours ago

      For a while (maybe still) Russian rockets even had a shotgun on board after wolves got to a landing first.

      • mkwt@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        It was a three-barreled gun that fired shotgun shells, rifle rounds, and rescue flares. 10 rounds of each type of ammunition were supplied. The stock could be detached and used as a machete.

        For a while, these guns were on every Soyuz capsule that docked with ISS, and they were under the operational control of the Soyuz commander. I’ve read that they may have been retired in 2007 because Russia finally ran out of the very unique ammo.

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Did the cosmonauts fend off the wolves, or did they just stick the wolves in their suits and pretend that they were on the mission the whole time?

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          “Look out Comrade! Is wolf, attempting to undermine Glorious People’s Space Mission with revisionist propaganda of deed. Death to Wolf. Death to Trotsky. Long live Great Socialist Republic.”

    • Ariselas@piefed.ca
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      12 hours ago

      I listened to Chris Hadfield describe coming home in a Soyuz capsul and it rolling a few times after hitting the ground. Land works but water sounds more comfortable, as long as you don’t get sea sick on top of it all.

      • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Water isn’t like in the video games. It’s still a hard landing that you wouldn’t survive if you were going too fast. There’s just much more margin for error trying to hit the ocean vs. a plot of land.

        • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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          4 hours ago

          My father was a fighter pilot. He explained that at a sufficiently sharp angle, hitting water was like hitting concrete.

      • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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        9 hours ago

        When they were covering the Artemis landing, they mentioned that just returning to earth from weightlessness makes them pretty nauseous, so they get motion sickness meds before landing anyway. Ibuprofen or anti inflammatory meds too, since 1 G is hard on joints after a few days without it.

    • bluesheep@sh.itjust.works
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      11 hours ago

      Both approaches have technical challenges. Returning to land requires a slower landing speed (although as a percentage of the starting velocity of a spacecraft its a pretty insignificant difference) and landing on the sea requires the carrying of flotation devices and designing a capsule with buoyancy in mind.

      Does landing on the sea really require that much more braking when compared to land? Sure water has some give but I’ve always understood that, from a large enough hight, due to surface tension landing on water is the same as landing on concrete. But I ain’t no physicist and by no means of the imagination a rocket scientist so I might as well be very wrong here lmao

      • turmacar@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        One of the advantages of water is even if your target area is measured in square miles it’s all roughly at sea level. If you miss your target area on land you have to account for that and trees and wildlife and hopefully not buildings.

        Like the above said, you can do either, it’s kind of a wash. But a water based landing does simplify some things.

    • brownsugga@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      yes the post may be inaccurate but i doubt the dumbass they were responding to could have even read HALF of your comment

    • tarsisurdi@lemmy.eco.br
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      14 hours ago

      another thing that’s also not considered here is the fact that astronauts parachute out of the capsule before impact

  • theblurstoftimes@leminal.space
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    10 hours ago

    Just launch these fuckers into space. I’m fine with not shooting trash at the sun because it’s too expensive but we should let make an exception for people like this. If they’re so smart I’m sure they’ll figure out a way back.

      • mkwt@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        They later said it was less than 1 mile away from the target spot.

        A big benefit of the ocean is if the capsule loses all attitude control, it can still reenter and survive. But it will be a “ballistic reentry”, much more punishing with the g forces, and also about 1500 miles short of the target zone.

        The Pacific Ocean makes it easy to ensure that those backup contingency landing sites are also safe landing sites.

      • felsiq@piefed.zip
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        12 hours ago

        I mean they generally do aim for a specific spot so the ships can be nearby to pick it up, so even aiming for the ocean a perfect bullseye is a valid thing to say lol

  • Kairos@lemmy.today
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    14 hours ago

    What the fuck is the first person insinuating? What would always landing in the water “prove”??

    • Diddlydee@feddit.uk
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      14 hours ago

      I think she’s saying ‘pay attention’ because she is used to people drifting off mid-sentence

    • Carmakazi@piefed.social
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      13 hours ago

      You can’t easily go out to see a splashdown in the middle of the ocean, therefore space travel is fake.

      • bountygiver [any]@lemmy.ml
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        11 hours ago

        Except for all the private boats parked right outside of the restricted area watching with binoculars.

        If they are landing on land it would have to be in like a middle of desert/plains anyways and it’s not exactly trivial to go watch in person either

        • CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          The types of people who say this stuff are solipsists if that helps. THEY can’t personally go see it land so from their perspective it’s fake

    • Signtist@bookwyr.me
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      11 hours ago

      She probably assumes the landing location is entirely random, which is ridiculous to anyone who has even the slightest understanding of the amount of planning needed for space travel, but those people and the people who believe space travel is fake are not the same people.

    • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      This mission especially brought the “space travel is fake” crowd out. The rocket launch explodes over a deserted area, nobody’s onboard, all the missions are faked, and the splashdowns are in restricted waters to sell the simulation.

      Usually this is on top of “well you can’t survive the Van Allen radiation belts”, as if radiation safety and shielding is not a problem we understood and solved before we even lit off Mercury.

      Ultimate reasoning for it is either a vague notion of “control”, bread and circuses, or “they do this to defy God”, because space isn’t real and the Firmament lies above the sky.

  • Gork@sopuli.xyz
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    13 hours ago

    boing boing

    I would add a spring emoji but the UNICODE Consortium has not deemed it important enough to include one in the character set.