Sea Landings vs Ground Landings: The Evolving Art of Returning Spacecraft

NASA’s Orion relies on ocean splashdowns to simplify recovery and cushion impact, a method chosen over precise land landings due to technical and safety trade-offs; Russia’s Soyuz uses a ground touchdown with a last-second retrorocket burst, trading weight and crew capacity for a firm, flat landing. Boeing’s Starliner is experimenting with ground landings using inflatable airbags, while SpaceX’s Dragon remains water-based and Starship aims for fully reusable, ground-based landings at spaceports in the future, potentially ending the era of ocean recoveries.