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>To be fair, there were people in NASA's crafts.

The Dragon capsule is designed to hold people, so SpaceX wouldn't need a bigger ship or crane to haul them in.

Designed to hold and have real life people inside are two very different things. NASA didn't want to have a successful mission and then lose their hero astronauts because they couldn't find them at sea in time.

Also remember that NASA was doing this in the age before GPS...

The crew capsule will probably never land in the ocean as they plan to land on a pad with thrusters.

I was all, like, "Really?"

Google went all, like, "Really..."

http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20120530

> In the future, Dragon will use SuperDraco thrusters to land on a landing pad on ground.

This then led to looking up SuperDraco, which is on this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_(rocket_engine_family)

And then we all know how wikipedia is. I'll be following links for the rest of the afternoon and probably shake myself out of it when I realize that I've been looking at Wikpedia articles for Marvel superheroes for 20 minutes.

[edit ooh, this is worth seeing too] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUUnYgo1-lI

Musk said during the press conference today that they're targeting thruster landings (in any atmosphere!) within 3 years, or more like 4-5 if they encounter difficulties.

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