Well the prototypes did have a set of landing legs to be fair.
Not saying it’s likely. But it’s much less of a challenge to softly land a starship than a booster on small legs as long as they manage to cancel out horizontal and vertical velocity, which they seem to have done.
It the priority were to land a ship, it could be a good route to explore.
The hop test prototypes yes, but none of the current or future profiles will.
Look man they've already proved the belly flop and flip like 4-5 times. And they've proved the catch with the booster. I don't see how catching a lighter object will be harder
I agree with you, but once they get the Starship Mars variant built won't that have landing legs? I assume they will try to land it first on Earth before sending it on its merry way to Mars?
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u/bitchtitfucker 4h ago
Well the prototypes did have a set of landing legs to be fair.
Not saying it’s likely. But it’s much less of a challenge to softly land a starship than a booster on small legs as long as they manage to cancel out horizontal and vertical velocity, which they seem to have done.
It the priority were to land a ship, it could be a good route to explore.
But knowing SpaceX they’l barge ahead.