Certainly lab equipment can measure distances well below 1 um fairly easily, I could manage 1 um in my garage. The issue is that the conditions at time of catch are VERY dynamic and not at all lab-like.
Your positioning system needs to acquire a fix at least 100m out in variable atmospheric conditions on a rocket undergoing heavy acceleration and dumping all kinds of heat, smoke and vibrations into itself, the atmosphere, and everything around it.
In addition having a fix on your tracking device is only half the game, not you have to figure out where the rest of the rocket is in relation to your tracking device. Which again, vibrations, temperature and manufacturing all have an effect.
So while yet, a vive tracking puck isn't entirely unlike the workable solution it is also entirely unsuitable as a solution and should not be used as a baseline to measure off of.
So? Yeah it's a challenging environment, we know that. My point is that the default way to solve this problem is to track your object from your reference point.
Your positioning system needs to acquire a fix at least 100m out in variable atmospheric conditions on a rocket undergoing heavy acceleration and dumping all kinds of heat, smoke and vibrations into itself, the atmosphere, and everything around it.
In addition having a fix on your tracking device is only half the game, not you have to figure out where the rest of the rocket is in relation to your tracking device. Which again, vibrations, temperature and manufacturing all have an effect.
So while yet, a vive tracking puck isn't entirely unlike the workable solution it is also entirely unsuitable as a solution and should not be used as a baseline to measure off of.