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Comment by micampe | Hacker News Reader

> although the landing procedures could more than nullify whatever comfort benefits they had.

Could you expand a little bit here, what to you mean?

If I had to guess, it's the fact that Russian spacecraft tend to land on the ground, and typically fire a rocket burst right before landing to slow down even more. It's the equivalent of getting kicked in the ass by a rocket-powered donkey, twice.

American craft land in the water, which is much more forgiving to begin with, and I don't think they fire rockets before hitting the surface.

(Although, I'd love to hear more about the other design differences.)

The modern Soyuz are pretty good though - 'soft landing' engines reduce the speed at impact to less than 5 feet per second (!), and there's shock-absorbing seats.

Archive.org link due to government shutdown in the US:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130928200146/http://www.nasa.go...

Good Guy Internet Archive. Serving government websites while their servers are "closed".

Video of the soft-landing engines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2X2kaqYatI

Water landing means that the spacecraft is limited to a certain volume/mass ratio in order to float (preferably not upside down), withstand some waves, under/over pressure and 'salty water conduct electricity' problems etc. or alternatively turn to a submarine. I doubt water landing is so much easier than ground landing. And what you gonna do in case of crash-landing or some hull cracks?

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