I helped develop the “Phoenix” SSTO concept with Gary (note t-shirts) that was an inspiration for the DC-X, but I did no work or engineering on the DC-X itself.

Website here.

The first stage of a multi-stage rocket is much less weight-sensitive than upper stages. Saving some fuel for a landing would not have the payload penalty that an upper stage or space capsule using a rocket landing would. The fuel percentage would be far less than 50 percent, but I don’t have any hard data on what it would actually be.

It would be almost empty at landing, and not weigh much. Weight penalties for a rocket-recoverable first stage (aside from the fuel) include the landing legs.

Parachutes weigh something too. A lot, for large stages.

One problem is trajectories. It’s very difficult to work a stage-one burn trajectory to allow a ballistic landing at or near the launch site, although I’ve seen some interesting “dogleg” tricks (on paper) to solve this. Easiest solution is a downrange landing site. Unfortunately, almost everything downrange of any eastern launch site is ocean, and overland launch sites give regulators hives.

Another problem is aerodynamics of the “fall” before you light the rocket. Not hard to get an unrecoverable spin started, and some solutions involve a small “drogue” chute just for stabilization, not slowing.

An upper-stage or orbital recovery would be at velocities where re-entry heating would be an issue, although the high velocity also gives you a lot more margin on landing sites.

It showed us a cool film from SpaceX of their test, and was never intended to be a comprehensive article on the subject.

But I’d been reading other articles in the news about the test, and some of them seemed to think this was the first time this had been done. Heck, I think even Armadillo was doing things along this line.

This isn’t about ranking one effort against the other. I just think the sight of a real-life rocket hovering, then landing on its tail on a pillar of fire, like something from a ’50s sci-fi flick, is just totally awesome. It doesn’t get old, just as the sight of a Shuttle floating to a landing like a 737 never got old. There’s just something about sci-fi become reality that I find so compelling.

Disclaimer out of the way…

I sure hope the percentage of fuel used for landing is somewhere south of 50%

I’d say that your second question is interesting when I think about that thing finally operational. You’d think that at some point coming back from orbit, there’s an aerodynamic regime in the middle, after the fireball phase, where a parachute would be an effective way to slow down, before you fire off the expensive rockets for the final touchdown. I don’t know if they’re doing it, but I hope they considered it.

If they did, it would look a bit like Curiosity. At first I didn’t think there was much comparison, but thinking about how a parachute might work does make the resemblance to the parachute-then-skycrane profile more obvious. Yeah, it could work. Maybe even better in a thicker atmosphere.

Some articles are talking like nothing has ever done a lateral maneuver before.

Gary and me at the DC-X site back in the day…

Will they use a parachute that would reduce the amount of fuel to land?

Curiosity used a large parachute to slow it down, and then fired off the Skycrane.