Landing still requires a lot of fuel, which needs fuel to be carried up. It was a waste and still is.
If they come up with reusable fished from the ocean, that'd be useful.
If they come up with reusable fished from the ocean, that'd be useful.
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.
And guess what you can do? Run 9 LEO missions with the same booster and throw it away on the 10th with a GEO mission. That’s freaking incredible.
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-elon-musk-falcon-9...
The breakeven is closer to 2 launches than to 3, so 3.
If a booster can survive 20 launches, it probably has most of the gotchas for launch #1 ironed out.
Also they need to leave the gravity well while planes don't do that?
It's completely different.
Do you think you can fall from space and hit the ocean and be reusable? To land in the water and not spatter yourself you'll need to be going less than 20 miles per hour, which is a hell of a lot less then the 1000+MPH a rocket booster is going, and second stage would turn to plasma if it didn't slow down first.