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> subsonic lift is well understood and has been for decades

I said easy. Not well understood. I can fly planes. It’s hard, and has limited room for fucking up. (It’s also hyperbole to suggest we understand lift. We don’t.)

Piloting a boat is easier and more forgiving. Hence, splashdown. You don’t need direction. You don’t need lift. Parachute physics is a backbreaker, but it’s symmetrical. Same for splash.

by _moof17 hours ago|

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You're a VC arguing with an aerospace engineer about aerospace engineering.

I'm also a pilot (CFI). My day job is space operations. And I can tell you've had too many hangar arguments about how wings work.

Pilots don't understand lift. Aero engineers understand it just fine.

by JumpCrisscross9 hours ago|

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I love this comment. Thank you. For what it’s worth, I’m not a CFI but I did study actual astronautical engineering. Not much good once we’re in an atmosphere, which, granted, is where the boats and planes go. But I’ll stand by my statement that nobody—apart from interplanetary reëntry and drone teams—fundamentally understands lift. (I certainly didn’t when I was solving analytic solutions by hand.)

by stackghost19 hours ago|

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>Piloting a boat is easier and more forgiving. Hence, splashdown.

At no point were the astronauts piloting a boat. The reasons they splash down into the ocean has nothing to do with buoyancy being easier to solve, and even less to do with the ease of piloting a boat.

>It’s also hyperbole to suggest we understand lift. We don’t.

Maybe you personally do not understand lift, but "we" do in fact understand it. Please educate yourself before continuing this discussion any further.

by WalterBright17 hours ago|

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There are multiple mathematical and physical approaches to understand lift, but they have the same results and are correct.