> They need to be able to stabilize the rocket's landing in all sorts of conditions if they want to have any hope of landing it on another planet.
Well, not really. Dragons (and Red Dragons, for interplanetary travel) are way, way less sensitive to the whims of weather. The issue with the first stage is that you have a very large, very fragile, very bottom-heavy tin can that you're trying to balance on a moving platform.
This is entirely different than trying to land a pod, which is what we'll be doing on other planets. Dragon v2 will be landing on land (though doing parachute recovery from water for initial CCS missions, as per NASA spec), and we'll see how stable it is then.
Well, not really. Dragons (and Red Dragons, for interplanetary travel) are way, way less sensitive to the whims of weather. The issue with the first stage is that you have a very large, very fragile, very bottom-heavy tin can that you're trying to balance on a moving platform.
This is entirely different than trying to land a pod, which is what we'll be doing on other planets. Dragon v2 will be landing on land (though doing parachute recovery from water for initial CCS missions, as per NASA spec), and we'll see how stable it is then.