JF Mezei wrote:

On 2017-09-24 16:34, Jeff Findley wrote:

From above article:

"The reason we decided not to pursue (powered landings) heavily
is it would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to qualify
that for safety, particularly for crew transport," Musk said.

Ok, so was Dragon gonna do powered re-entry like Stage 1, or be like
Soyuz with lifting re-entry, parachutes and powered "cushion" very near
ground?


More like the former.


I was told it was to be a powered one like stage I, where fuel available
becomes critical. (and validating software a bigger challenge).


No. The only reason there were 'issues' with the Falcon Core is that
the engines can't be deeply throttled. That's not the case with
Dragon V2.


was a management/engineering trade-off and appears to be SpaceX's call,
not NASA's.

Suspect origimally NASA, then SpaceX realised water landings not as bad
as thought.


Why is it so hard to safety certify? Because NASA doesn't want to
certify it.



Yes. Dragon flies a lifting reentry and therefore has some cross-range
capability. This was also true of both Gemini and Apollo (and Russian
Soyuz and Chinese Shenzhou).


Does "cross range" refer to only left/right, or also forward/backward?
(aka, a narrow elipse or a full circle as possible landing locations?


Capsule is round. Why would it be limited to only 'left/right'
control?


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn