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Comment by thescorer | Hacker News Reader

This was "close?"

Getting a sub-orbital rocket traveling at multiple Mach to decelerate and land (vertically, nose up) on a point in the ocean that's about 200 square feet in size?

Yeah, that was very close.

Put a .5" x .5" cardboard square on a wooden post.

Grab a pushpin.

Start counting paces away from the post.

Stop when you're about four city blocks away.

Start running full speed towards the post.

Hurl the pin at the post as hard as you can when you're three city blocks away.

Pin glances off of one corner of the cardboard square.

Crowd yells, "epic fail!"

In contrast, from the HN-featured article about finding the Beagle2 probe on Mars:

MRO's data confirms that Beagle landed just 5km from the centre of its targeted touchdown zone.

5km, and it was considered a bulls-eye accurate landing.

At the relative ranges we are talking about here, those numbers are probably more comparable than many would realize. Consider, Mars at its closest, is over 6700km away. The space station at its furthest is 418km. (Assuming I looked up the correct numbers, of course.)

Mars is 225,000,000 km away, on average.

So, obviously, I looked up the wrong numbers. I knew they didn't sound right.

Beagle 2 had a very different weight budget.

Considering it came down from 60 miles up and 5x the speed of sound, yes, this is pretty damned close. Especially given the probable cause, needing just a little more hydraulic fluid, and the fact that it's literally the first try for real landing.

Did you watch the same video I watched?

They practically had the thing hovering on the barge. All that failed was the angle!

I'm guessing the poster thought this was a failed take-off.

I wasn't "in-the-know" about this being a return / landing until I got to this comment section.

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