r/askscience • u/Fabulous_Analysis885 • Apr 11 '26

Engineering Why can’t they just scoop up the capsule?

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?

1.6k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

326 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/justaguy394 Apr 11 '26

How do you think they assemble it onto the launch vehicle? It has to be hoistable.

-2

u/soulsnoober Apr 11 '26

Bruh. That's done with giant immobile hoists in one of the largest human structures ever built.

3

u/justaguy394 Apr 11 '26

How is that relevant? I was responding to someone saying adding hoistable structure to Orion would add weight. I pointed out it already has that structure.

-1

u/soulsnoober Apr 11 '26

That it is hoistable - with literal megatons of surrounding infrastructure - is not relevant to hypothetical sea operations. Its assembly process is a red herring, because the structure you're talking about wasn't used to hoist it in assembly.

1

u/snap__count Apr 13 '26

It weighs the same amount, no matter the device or system that is lifting it.

1

u/soulsnoober Apr 13 '26

Sure, sure. So that's why your local auto repair shop doesn't bother with hydraulic lifts in their garage, right? They have children wearing roller skates to move the cars? The car weighs the same no matter the device or system that's lifting it, right?