> If it hovered for 5 seconds at .5 meters, for example, could it burn off enough extra fuel? The Falcon 9 cannot hover. The thrust of the single landing engin

> If it hovered for 5 seconds at .5 meters, for example, could it burn off enough extra fuel? The Falcon 9 cannot hover. The thrust of the single landing engine, even when throttled down to minimum, will provide significant lift to the empty rocket. That's part of what makes this maneuver so difficult and so awesome: it's called the hoverslam, where you achieve 0m altitude and 0m/s velocity at time = 0. For reference, though, the Grasshopper/F9R-dev1, could hover due to it only having 3 engines, not 9, and because they could ballast it with additional fuel.