They have a demo video showing a helicopter catching a booster dropped from a second helicopter:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3CWGDhkmbs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3CWGDhkmbs</a><p>(from <a href="https://www.rocketlabusa.com/launch/electron/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rocketlabusa.com/launch/electron/</a> )<p>The parachuting booster falls at 10 meters per second from 6000 meters, so they've got a pretty tight window.<p>The helicopter has a ceiling of 4300 meters and can cover about 3 km a minute, so you've got a couple minutes after the chute deploys to get to the closest safe distance when the booster is still above the helicopter and then about 5 minutes to catch it once the helicopter is above it.
Many years ago I was at Dugway Proving Ground when NASA was supposed to catch the Genesis Space Probe under parachute with "hollywood stunt pilots" flying A-Star helicopters with long probes mounted on the front, to hook the parachute in mid-air.<p>It all would have worked out swimmingly if the parachute on the Genesis would have opened, but an installation error caused it not to and for the probe to smash into the ground, leaving some very confused and disappointed helicopter pilots, among others.<p>Space is hard.
I suspect that this will only be a viable procedure until the inevitable accident that causes a helicopter crash, then it will be deemed too risky for regular use (unless the helicopter can be unmanned)
I wonder if they’re using a steerable parachute to put it on a predictable heading. In the rocketry hobby we use the drogue/main deployment to keep from having to walk so far to collect a rocket. Naturally, someone put an acrobatic parachute, gps, microcontroller, and some actuators in an airframe to fly a model rocket back to the launch rail. It worked pretty well.
<a href="https://youtu.be/4ac-VFPAqIo" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/4ac-VFPAqIo</a>
They already have a parachute on the booster. Why not steer the parachute and land on land?<p>The US military has been using automatically guided steerable parachutes for over a decade.[1] The current JPADS system has both GPS and visual guidance, so they can drop a load from a high altitude and land on target. There's a commercial version.[2] Maybe land on a target of crushable cardboard.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_CFv2MT7gM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_CFv2MT7gM</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A3PfDfzYEM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A3PfDfzYEM</a>
I could be wrong, but I though SpaceX catches its entire rocket (all stages) now with rafts/boats, doesn't it? What does this add over that already-implemented system?<p>Wouldn't blimps be a far better tech to keep the net aloft?