> Landing still requires a lot of fuel, which needs fuel to be carried up. That's true, and that reduces the payload of the returning stage. To have it working

> Landing still requires a lot of fuel, which needs fuel to be carried up. That's true, and that reduces the payload of the returning stage. To have it working, you either have to reduce the payload or to increase the size of the stage. In both cases the payload weight to liftoff weight decreases. > It was a waste and still is. That's false, as in exchange the operator gets the stage back to be reused on the next flight. That's usually a huge saving in costs. Fuel is relatively cheap, and to make a rocket somewhat bigger or a payload somewhat smaller does relatively small change to the price of a kilogram to LEO comparing to the opportunity not to pay for the stage hardware on the next flight. Overall SpaceX made a huge improvement in costs and moved the world launch industry quite a bit forward.