SpaceX Grasshopper Launch Filmed From Drone Helicopter

Don't forget about the landing fuel you have to tote with you along your whole trip. That is not trivial weight.

Actually it is trivial. The rocket is landing almost empty, the extra fuel to get down is vastly less than the amount to go up.

There were industry studies in the '90s and early 2000s that showed fairly conclusively that the added mass of fuel (especially as rockets are never burned dry) is about the same as all the added mass and complexity from a soft-landing parachute system. (Hard landing parachutes are lighter, but not suitable for a reusable system.) Remember, most of your mass is engines and their controllers, pumps, tanks, etc, which you have to carry anyway. And with first stages (which is what Grasshopper is), you can add more fuel without affecting your payload mass. (Reusable upper stages will eat into payload mass.)

[The extra mass required for a horizontal landing, otoh, massively outweighs the small amount extra fuel required for VTOL. They aren't even in the same universe.]

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/LoO_3IPMvS4/story01.htm

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