Yea, atmospheric drag does most of the work to slow the boostet rocket. Which makes it all the more counterintuitive to my brain that the economics and engineer

Yea, atmospheric drag does most of the work to slow the boostet rocket. Which makes it all the more counterintuitive to my brain that the economics and engineering doesn't make sense for deploying some kind of chutes to shave off velocity. Every kg in fuel you need to burn to land, you need to lift off the pad. From what I found through some Googling, a F9 booster uses a little under 1,000kgs to do the hover burn. I would imagine some lightweight aero surfaces would be more weight-efficient at decelerating the rocket than the 999th, 997th, 996th, (nth) kg of fuel.