[ethbro]

Also, if you deployed mitigation methods prematurely, then it stops the drive for improvement and tuning of the core landing functionality.

Quick deploy cushions or other "Oops" enhancements might feature into the final version of the barge, but for now I think they're still trying to maximize the landing success rate. Better not to split engineering resources when the most important problem can still benefit from optimization.

[JulianMorrison]

They are landing on Mars. That's the ultimate point. Mars does not have airbags.