[john-n]

Not done by spacex, they made this vid to demonstration the idea - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF81yjVbJE

I dont know of any ship that has the ability to land like that, except for craft in development like from blue origins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NANePoo_p30

I believe the Soyuz uses rockets to slow its decent before it hits the ground, but thats to assist the parachute rather than replace them.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

For the first video, I get "Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany, because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights.". What an absolutely boneheaded, irrelevant, infuriating reason to block a video of a rocket landing. :(

Also, John Carmack's Armadillo aerospace have made prototype rockets that can land vertically on their own thrusters. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8eb_1318290493

[olex]

I use Proxtube (https://proxtube.com/) to circumvent those blocks. Works quite reliably. Youtube is so much better when I can see all of it.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

I'm London now and can see it fine again.

[tsotha]

JAXA did the same thing a few years earlier with RVT (since cancelled).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TNoSQ2lPl0

[thematt]

Speaking of Blue Origin, if anybody is interested in working for us, we're hiring :)

http://www.blueorigin.com/careers/careers.html

[davidcuddeback]

Hey, Blue Origin looks pretty cool, and I go on the job market tomorrow. I might like to ask you some questions about Blue Origin if you don't mind, but your HN profile doesn't have any contact info. Would you mind adding contact info to your profile or emailing me to start a chat? (My contact info is in my profile.)

[thematt]

Email sent.

[jstclair]

Say hi to my bro!

[planetguy]

I'm gonna apply for jobs with Blue Origin, SpaceX and Planetary Resources.

But I'm gonna do it in a week when there's nothing particularly inspiring going on, just to avoid the resume crush. :)

[thematt]

There will be inspiring stuff happening in this industry for the foreseeable future. No point in waiting even a week, that's just one more week of amazing work you could have been a part of :)

[josephagoss]

That Blue Origin ship was amazing, if they could send this into orbit and then land it like this with no parachutes, that would be incredible? No one else has done that, not even Space X?

Is blue origin going to compete with Musk? I don't think Jeff will leave Amazon and focus on this 100%?

Really amazing times.

[huhtenberg]

> Soyuz uses rockets to slow its decent

That's how they land tanks. Parachutes first, and then one second before the impact boosters go off and slow the cargo down for a soft touchdown.

[planetguy]

What a Soyuz landing looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4XVhoezrzM

If you believe SpaceX's concept videos they're gonna do it without parachutes. I have no idea why, though. Parachutes are good. Perhaps they're just thinking ahead, because they want an all-purpose capsule that can land on the Moon just as well as the Earth.

[pyre]

Think Mars instead of Moon. Musk has stated that he wants to take this all the way to Mars.

[ricardobeat]

That didn't look like a "soft touchdown" at all!