SpaceX seriously should have developed the F9 reusable 2nd stage. And it STILL should.

Starship will succeed. But, irrespective, there are multiple reasons — even right now — that SpaceX should NOT have abandoned creating a reusable variant of their disposable second stage for Falcon 9, with admittedly, less than half the payload capacity. But you’d also get a fully reusable Falcon Heavy with the same upgrade.

This almost sounds pointless, given Starship, but hear me out, it’s remarkably sane, both economically and strategically, and with or without hindsight.

SpaceX should start this relatively minor development program now.

Here in 2023. I am not kidding.

2nd Stage concept. CREDIT | SpaceX

The decision likely made in 2017

Elon tweeted back in 2018 that they had abandoned the idea of developing a reusable 2nd stage which would have yielded a 100% reusable launch vehicle. They could have been seriously on it as far back as 2017 which is when the space industry innovator likely gave up on the idea.

The ostensible reasons for abandoning the major upgrade were:

• The reusable F9 payload is too low: only around 4 tone (calculation below) compared to 17 tone, due to the addition of landing legs and heat shielding. BUT a reusable Falcon Heavy could…