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On the contrary, there are MORE viable methods for reuse with a smaller vehicle. They can do mid-air recovery with such an upper stage, for instance, but no hop
by Robotbeat 6y ago
On the contrary, there are MORE viable methods for reuse with a smaller vehicle. They can do mid-air recovery with such an upper stage, for instance, but no hope of that with a Starship-sized upper stage.
- CarVac 6y agoMore ways to land, but the performance penalty of heat shielding will be crippling on a smaller stage.
- Robotbeat 6y agoI doubt that. SpaceX was going to make Falcon 9 fully reusable, and it wouldn’t have been crippling. Might be too small to launch a full crewed Dragon or 60 Starlinks, but I doubt if its payload would’ve even been halved compared to partial reuse.