Friday, March 21, 2025

Does It Worth Recovering The Rocket Upper Stages?

The answer is no! If you analyzes the successful rockets such as Saturn V and Falcon 9, you would find that their upper stages' dry mass are way lighter than the payload they carry. Optimizing an upper stage for recovery decreases the payload capacity considerably. Therefore the gain of recovering is highly offset by the payload penalty. Additionally, the reliability becomes a big problem as seen on the exploding Starships.

Also, note that the recovery is only possible for LEO deployments. GTO missions and beyond do not allow upper stage recovery. Designing a rocket is a long process and heading for the wrong direction has major implications.

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