I understand there is some engineering rationale provided, but it seems to me just like showing off, a spaceflight version of "longest e-penis" competition. "You can land your rocket at a ship? Well, then we'll catch ours mid-air!".
Seems kinda hacky, instead of investing the time & money needed for full reusability, they'll do a fraction of the work and hope for a successful helicopter recovery, which seems kinda hard. I know they tried a capture like that with some probe and it failed.
I can't figure out it that's brilliant or stupid.
Catching things falling from space is actually something that was done pretty regularly in the past. Before we had digital imaging sensors spy satellites had to rely on film. Orbiting imaging platforms would 'drop' film canisters, which would be caught by waiting aircraft, and flown back to a processing center to be developed.
The headline aside their approach is actually more "conservative" than SpaceX. Breaking off pieces of the rocket instead of piloting the entire rocket back to earth.
