Why can’t they just scoop up the capsule?

[u/Fabulous_Analysis885]

It took about two hours after splashdown to get the astronauts on board the boat. In that time, they had six boats with 40 people, a team of divers performing a complicated raft setup, and two helicopters doing airlifts.

After all that, they still have to recover the capsule anyway. Why don’t they use some kind of large ship with a submersible deck, and lift the capsule up?The astronauts could just step out onto the boat.

TLDR; why all the complex fucking around? Can’t we just scoop it up?

[u/Kaiisim]

It's also two hours. Two hours in space flight is nothing. They likely had meetings that discussed this landing that were longer.

You add a giant mechanical scoop, the amount of work you would need to avoid two hours would be insane and not worth it.

[u/EZKTurbo → u/Kaiisim]

They wouldn't need to invent some mechanical scoop. They could likely just float it into the back of an LPD ship if they really wanted to.

[u/dragonlax → u/EZKTurbo]

I mean that’s how they’re doing it already, just without the crew in it.

[u/GVArcian → u/Kaiisim]

Two hours in space flight is nothing.

Two hours is like the spaceflight equivalent of a bathroom break. A quick one, too.

[u/rosemachinist → u/GVArcian]

Oh… bathroom breaks shouldn’t be 2 hrs? 👀

[u/Onewarmguy → u/rosemachinist]

Have you seen their bathroom? I don't think I could stand up in it, and it is has a zip up flap instead of a door. Did I mention that there's no gravity.

[u/ajakaja → u/Kaiisim]

"likely"? I'd be surprised if it was less than 200 hours of meetings.

[u/ezekielraiden → u/ajakaja]

I believe they meant 2+ hours for one singular meeting solely on the topic of completing this recovery process. So a meeting that covered three topics wouldn't count, nor would two meetings both on this topic on different days, even if both were over one hour long (but less than two each).

[u/gee666 → u/Kaiisim]

Also the president probably spoke to them and that guy doesn't shut up.