• Troy@lemmy.ca
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    18 days ago

    The orbital mechanics thing is probably the most important. The delta-v to land isn’t that bad once you’re in orbit, but even getting to orbit is crazy. Also, you’d need a retro rocket for landing that could withstand the temperatures – which would be a super interesting engineering problem. It already is for the orbital probes, but they don’t have to carry enough fuel to land and have different mass budgets.