Landing legs

I was actually surprised they were even allowed to level the vehicle for fuelling, that makes things quite a bit simpler.

The engine would be very close to the ground, but it will not cause any ill effects since there is no aeroshell at the base. If it did have an aeroshell at the base, we would have issues with the Kruschnik (sp) effect. We had that problem with the bomb-pop vehicle and had to stand it off 4" higher in order to break the ground effect of the base.

The rubber pads eliminate the need for any additional landing structure. The pressurized tanks are actually quite strong. Even when we hit hard with full tanks right on a roll thruster, it barely put a small ding in the tank.

Since then we have re-hydrotested everything and it all checked out. We even have a dozen or so more flights on it since then.

Are you anticipating any difficulties with the rubber losing its elasticity while being in such close proximity to the LOX tank?
That's true, but it was still very lucky to miss the concrete.

Yes, I do expect to freeze the rubber fairly good that is next to the LOX tank. It will still have some elasticity left though, and that is only half of the footpads. We will still have sufficient dampening of the landing shock under "normal" conditions.

If the vehicle would have landed on the concrete, the outcome could have very well been much different. We are guessing still though as we have never actually dropped this vehicle on the concrete fully loaded and pressurized...

Later on perhaps when we have a module to spare, we may drop one on purpose so that we have the information as a data point. I think it is entirely possible that a future customer may even pay for that test data.