I think we're just going in circles now. The scale was a result of what it was meant to do. The extra hardware on top and extra fuel all add to the scale of it.

I think we're just going in circles now. The scale was a result of what it was meant to do. The extra hardware on top and extra fuel all add to the scale of it. It was a massive rocket because it needed to do a massive job. Anyway, I think we've gone off track from the original point, which was that full size launch vehicles taking off slow isn't because of gimbals vs. fins, it's because they're big and heavy. We can be pedantic and say it's specifically because of a low T-W ratio, but the T-W is low because the weight is high and it's not practical to build a massive rocket engine to increase it.