ELI5. If the weight of rocket fuel is so important, why do SpaceX boosters waste a ton of fuel landing themselves?
In: Engineering
Fuel is cheap. Getting it into orbit is expensive, and the rockets are expensive. These boosters don’t go to orbit, they give a push to get the ship off the ground and up to speed. It also doesn’t take much fuel comparatively to land a mostly empty booster, since most of the weight has either been ejected or has gone up to orbit.
It adds a bit of cost but that is very much outweighed by saving the boosters (if you can actually do it reliably).
Latest Answers