ELI5. If the weight of rocket fuel is so important, why do SpaceX boosters waste a ton of fuel landing themselves?

Question

ELI5. If the weight of rocket fuel is so important, why do SpaceX boosters waste a ton of fuel landing themselves?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Weight of fuel is an upper limit factor for how big you want to build a rocket. There’s still a ton of room to operate under the upper limits though, and SpaceX is simply building under the upper size limits. This is saving a lot of money reusing equipment even with higher fuel consumption cost.