this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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I'm not really sure that's the main reason. In case of a chute failure you're going to have a bad time in either case.
Russian capsules land on land.
I think it's just a lot more easier to recover, when there's no landscape around that you need to traverse
Russian capsules launch from the Kazack steppe. In the event of a launch abort, like there was in October 2018, you need to have a capsule that can land on land.
American capsules launch from Florida and fly over the ocean. In the event of an abort, they need to be able to land at sea.
They both took their abort modes and just made it the standard way to land after a mission.
This seems to make the most sense, so no matter whether it is true or not, i decided to trust this
Sounds like the real reason right here. The sea landing surely is a lot easier and quicker to recover as well.
It's also much easier to hit what you aim for
water -> water
Land -> oops, that's a tree, and that's a boulder, and that's a lake.
Although recovering the people is much easier on land, most of the time you can land a helicopter near the capsule, recovering the hardware is generally more difficult
Also where they are taking off and landing in Russia is a big flat wasteland. It's the ocean of the land. There isn't a lot of empty space in the US unless you are either in the desert or in the places we grow corn and wheat. Less shit to crash into when it's water in the US.
Makes perfect sense.
There are so many things that you can land on land that will absolutely ruin your day. A large boulder, a large tree, a cliffside, a building, something flammable, near an angry hungry bear... Astronauts coming back to Earth after spending a significant amount of time in microgravity are also mostly helpless until they adapt to Earth's gravity again. The open sea is seen as safer in the American school of thought.
Russians would actually send their cosmonauts to space with a gun in case they encountered a bear before rescue while in the wilderness.
Or if they encounter space-bears before reentry
I read that as "safer than an American school" and I'm like well yeah, low bar
Did you see the Principal that tackled a shooter the other day? Bravo!
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a school administrator
In fairness, if you can throw a person at a person, one or both of those people are probably going to think twice about crossing you.
I imagine a lot of factors... but yeah that's a big one, no mountains, no buildings, no population centers, you can miss by 100 miles and just add some time to the recovery.
The capsules can do a water splashdown with parachutes alone.
The capsules that land on land all seem to have some additional system to slow down in addition to the parachute. Boeing Starliner has airbags that deploy around and below the heat shield. Soyuz has a braking rocket system that fires immediately before impact.
So, the issue does come down to the chutes. A chute capable of reducing decent speed to 10m/s is significantly larger than one capable of getting the speed to 60 m/s. Impractically large on a weight constrained thing like a space capsule.
The Soyuz uses a small set of retro rockets to reduce speed in the last few seconds before touch down, and even then it’s like being in a car crash.
On the Vostok capsules the astronauts didn’t even land with the capsules, they just bailed out and parachuted down.
Landing in the ocean is significantly more comfortable and less complicated.
Your comment sounds good at first, it's just that they splash down in water at 7.5m/s.
The nasa blog on the final day said. “At 5,400 feet, Orion’s drogue parachutes were cut and the three main parachutes deployed, reducing velocity to less than 200 feet per second and guiding Orion on its final descent and splashdown.”
Which is to say “less than” roughly 60 meters per second. Somewhere else on the site I couldn’t find again they mentioned it being a touch down speed of 20 miles per hour, which is a fair bit slower at about 9 meters a second, but that’s still a car crash if you’re hitting a solid surface.
The point remains. Getting a large object like that down to a soft, non injurious, speed is not practical with just a parachute. Other techniques must be employed.
and except for the nonsensical idea that water is soft and bouncy and it is more comfortable to land into it... it is not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEmss85gCbs