The engineering required to do this looks insane but can anyone the reasoning for such a massive undertaking?
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In school physics it is often ignored, but air resistance does, in fact, exist. By doing a bellyflop maneuver the surface area in the direction of the movement (downwards) is greatly increased, which increases the total air resistance and allows the rocket to slow down greatly.
Things that fall back down from space are very very fast, so slowing down is a must and doing it by using air resistance is a very cheap method of doing it. They still have to reduce their speed further by using their rocket engines, but doing the bellyflop first reduces the speed and thus the amount of fuel needed to reach the landing speed.
All of this said, it is questionable whether the bellyflop maneuver is actually viable. The air resistance will cause a lot of heat and force, potentially weakening or even destroying the rocket. Even if the rocket survives, it will need some maintenance before it can be reused.
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