Also
We did land on land
For like forty years we did that exclusively
It's called the Space Shuttle and it's pretty cool
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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Ignoring that the Soyuz is a more traditional capsule that does land on land, with timed rockets to slow their descent just before impact.
Let’s just say landing on water is better, based on the medical injuries different astronauts have suffered riding home on the Soyuz. Several American astronauts have experienced bruising and joint/back pain from the hard “bone-jarring” landing.
That's true. Honestly I remember being a kid, learning about the Soyuz recovery system and being shocked. A 20mph collision with the ground (without the baking SRs, 5mph with them) doesn't sound like much, but it can still ring your bell pretty good.
But why they landed so close to California?
It's obviously because they are all a bunch of woke snowflakes who want to make us all gay! Wake up, sheeple!
Its called landing, not watering ffs.
Pay attention to what? Why would you say that and then proceed to say nothing?
Conspiracy theorists on the far fringe are all about knowing more than you, being smarter than you for noticing the obvious when you can't.
Them saying "pay attention" doesn't mean "there's something here that you are missing". It means "I am projecting that I know more than you". This is why they don't elaborate.
Because it allows conspiracy theorists maximum flexibility to wrap whatever pseudoscience into whatever objections they get as replies.
It's 'think for your self'. Its a command, an open ended command.
Which they say with authority, because they fashion themselves as thought leaders (cough cult leaders cough) and have literally delusional levels of self confidence and ego.
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.
I recently left a job where my coworker was the absolute dumbest motherfucker I have ever met, but at least he was willing to listen to people with differing opinions. I think I managed to pull him a little left, at the very least he started out going "the people in charge generally know what is best for us even if they sometimes dip into things themselves" and ended with "fuck ice, they're fascists acting exactly like the nazis did and the shitbags in charge are enabling them at every turn, the whole system needs reset" which is a pretty big leap, IMO.
One thing I couldn't budge him on was the moon landing. It doesn't matter that I have assisted in a laser range-finding experiment using the retro reflectors left on the moon, thus confirming to myself that we HAVE been there.
It didn't matter how much I explained the Apollo missions, how much I explained why things behave in space the way they do, how much I explained why NASA essentially hd to rebuild a moon mission from the ground up, or any number of things. He still firmly believed it was all bullshit and we never went there.
I would always end the conversation about space stuff with "the biggest reason to me is that the USSR never came out and said 'this is fake, here's proof they faked the landing' and basically gave up not long afterward, and they clearly had spies and intelligence capable of infiltrating NASA systems and obtaining classified information, just look at the Russian space shuttle. If they knew we faked it, they would have every reason in the world to embarss us by revealing our lies to the world" and he would always agree on that point. Still fake to him though
Space deniers are the bottom of the fucking barrel as far as I'm concerned. I don't know what it is about them, or how they got so fucking stupid, but there appears to be no limit to their ignorance.
What is she even getting at?
A lot of conspiracy narrative is just pointing out things that seem odd and that's enough evidence, you don't need a conclusion
I was about to say, what is even her point?
You’re obviously not paying attention
Well, I am broke. Is this a weekly charge, or daily?
Sorry, what were we talking about? Something about pain and tension?
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She's stupid, so don't worry about it. Or she's saying 'pay attention' as she's well versed in people drifting off when she speaks.
Lol i love this insult
Probably something along the lines of how the reptilians live in underwatwr cities thus landing in the ocean makes it easier for them to swap out astronauts.
Yeah. I’m ready for the wacked-out conspiracy shit.
It’s because the ocean doesn’t exist.
say that the astronauts landed in the ocean because they don’t want us to realise that there is no ocean. NASA landed on the moon and faked the “”””””””splashdown“””””””” (which was filmed by Kevin Reynolds at a soundstage on Specific Boulevard) just to keep people from realising THE TRUTH..!!!.!!.!!!.!!!!!!!!!!!
Pay attention.
No, no she’s on to something. If they don’t touch down on land why is it called a landing and not a sea-ing.
Checkmate atheists
Because sea-ing is believing, and they know that we should only WANT to believe, but not actually believe.
Water big, easy hit, soft splash.
It’s called splashdown for a reason. I guess on land it could still be a splashdown?
"Touchdown" on land.
Unfortunately, on at least one occasion it was. Cosonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when the main parachute failed on his Soyuz 1 capsule. Probably the worst part was he knew, before launch, that he would probably die: CW:An all around grim story, and a picture of his, unrecognisable, charred remains
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