>why they decided to go with a vertical-landing-design, instead of putting some wings on it and having it glide home Basically, the physical and aerodynamic st

>why they decided to go with a vertical-landing-design, instead of putting some wings on it and having it glide home Basically, the physical and aerodynamic stresses of decelerating vertically are fairly similar to those of accelerating vertically. Whereas designing something which can work as a rocket and a plane would be a lot more difficult, and probably more expensive to produce. It's more difficult to control vertically, but if you can get it right you save a lot of complexity in the physical engineering.