If, instead of flying to burnout and ejecting the stabilization drogue, we instead throttle back to just the minimum needed for attitude control until apogee is reached, the vehicle should be stable in the engines-down configuration on the way down even with the engines completely off. We should, in theory, be able to do an automated powered landing.
Alternately, we could close the throttle completely after the ascent burn, and still eject the stabilization drogue, but then release it at apogee without a main parachute attached, so the vehicle goes back to ballistic descent.
We would just stick ground-penetrator spike on the base legs for the final bit of landing attenuation.
Monoprop peroxide powered landing won't cut it for the X-Prize vehicle, which would require about 400 pounds of peroxide to do the job of a 60 pound chute system (and it would be scary as hell to ride down), but it would be an excellent high operability system demonstration, especially if the final CG was offset to give a slight L/D ratio for steered landing. It is attractive because it would actually reduce total system complexity in the minimal case, although for a manned vehicle it would force you to add redundancy that you could live without on a parachute system.
If we get a couple perfect parachute flights off, we may stick the laser altimeter on the vehicle and do some experiments with this.
John Carmack
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