Henry Spencer wrote on 171113: > the Ranger landers had solid retros that decelerated them to fairly low velocity before impact. Fairly low velocity is relative. For Ranger impact probes made of balsa wood their lunar impact velocity after retro braking still was at least an order of magnitude larger than the impact velocity of the amateur rocket in "How Hard.Can It Be" landing without a chute. The issue here: by what means could such velocity be neutralised on impact (over here) if the chute did not deploy. To save the electronic data. jd