Elon Musk famously said – and I paraphrase: show a little ankle but not the whole leg. SpaceX has recently shown us a little ‘Fin.’
Seems SpaceX has perfected rocket landings to the point that they’ve got time to work on finesse. New footage of a Falcon 9-R test flight at their McGregor TX site shows their test vehicle has ‘evolved’ fins which pop out of the sides like Tesla door handles. These paddles appear for attitude control and are deployed during descent. This should be a step up from the previous stopgap technique which involved bursts of gas from cold thrusters.
