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Interesting exercise. I hadn't thought of it as a two-body pendulum. There must have been some rather fancy control systems.
This whole sky-crane manure just boggles my mind. It's unbelievable. I guess it boils down to Manual control vs computer control. The human just can't react quickly and often enough to stabilise the load hanging below.
Similar kind of thing to this I guess:
Chickens have got this nailed
I noticed on the Perseverance/Curiosity mission they used several tethers which would help reduce oscillation, and the manoeuvre was primarily in a decelerating descent with lateral movement kept to a minimum which would also help, but the thruster control is incredible.
For when you don’t have enough things going in different directions at once...
I wondered what would happen if you clipped the basket with the helicopter blades, then decided that I didn't want to know.