Tim Dodd

They've actually done it.

They've actually done it successfully once.

How does the helicopter grab the rocket?

With this giant like drag line and a hook.

Oh, wow.

And then literally just like grabs, snags onto the parachute.

And it's pretty amazing.

But this is a small rocket.

Their rocket's only about a metric ton.

The booster is empty.

And with SpaceX, they weren't even getting to the point of the booster surviving reentry long enough to be able to pull the parachutes.

You know, their mass fractions, you know, and that varies.

Every single rocket's different.

You know, all the, you know, for instance, Rocket Lab uses carbon composite fuselage and tanks or, you know, same thing.

And that's very, very lightweight, has really good mass fractions, and therefore their drag coefficients and things like that, they were able to survive reentry.

Of the first stage, which is something that SpaceX wasn't able to do at the time.

What's kind of the big, I think, breakthrough for SpaceX with reusing the booster is they realized we have to basically slow down before we hit the atmosphere.

So they actually do what they used to call a re-entry burn, which I still think is the correct term because it is re-entering the atmosphere.

But now they call it the entry burn.

And they light up three of the nine Merlin engines, not only to slow it down, but actually even while those engines are firing, it creates like a...