Thanks for the good point about manoeuverability when landing on bad terrain during an unplanned emergency.
> don't manned launches have fairly strict weather condition safety requirements? I'm pretty sure that would include sea states in any conceivable abort landing zone.
You might be right, but note that all the shuttle abort landings sites were on land at a handful of locations, in part because the shuttle was a glider (so it had a decent amount of unpowered range) and in part because landing the shuttle somewhere that wasn't planned was nearly impossible (since it needed such a huge flat expanse to land). Therefore, you only needed to have a good weather simultaneously at a few locations.
For the Dragon, however, the lack of gliding ability and the ability to land anywhere in an emergency makes it infeasible to wait for simultaneously good weather everywhere, simply because it might end up anywhere along it's flight path in an emergency. So you probably need to be able to handle bad weather.
> don't manned launches have fairly strict weather condition safety requirements? I'm pretty sure that would include sea states in any conceivable abort landing zone.
You might be right, but note that all the shuttle abort landings sites were on land at a handful of locations, in part because the shuttle was a glider (so it had a decent amount of unpowered range) and in part because landing the shuttle somewhere that wasn't planned was nearly impossible (since it needed such a huge flat expanse to land). Therefore, you only needed to have a good weather simultaneously at a few locations.
For the Dragon, however, the lack of gliding ability and the ability to land anywhere in an emergency makes it infeasible to wait for simultaneously good weather everywhere, simply because it might end up anywhere along it's flight path in an emergency. So you probably need to be able to handle bad weather.