I cleaned out my garage.
Serious question: Why wouldn't they make that landing stool longer? Leaves more room for error and more importantly the pilot can actually see it.
If you are talking about the length from nose to tail, you start risking getting the pad too close to the engine intakes which introduces the possibility of debris getting sucked in and blowing an engine. (I'm not entirely sure how much suction is coming from the intakes in vertical land mode because they are getting quite a bit of thrust through a big lift fan on top of the jet).
Also there's a center of gravity issue. Fighter planes are very back heavy. He could have landed another 2-3 towards the nose and still been okay.
Finally, the pilot gave a bit of insight in his interview that he doesn't actually look at the deck when he's landing. He's looking at his indications for altitude, rate of descent and the landing signal officer on the deck who is giving hand signals for deck placement. In other words his brain is really in heavy information process mode.
The technical aspect of doing it isn't much different than a landing with his gear down. The complicated part is doing all the brain processing while blocking out that he doesn't have any nose gear!!!!!!!
