They don't need to pay the mass penalty of landing legs, just some much lighter pins that stick out to the side.
The Falcon 9 landing legs were some excellent engineering, but scaled up to the size of starship they would weigh many tons (note the square-cube law makes them more unfavorable proportionally, not just massive considered amsolutely).
This would be a big deal for the booster, but it's absolutely vital for Starship itself because any additional dry mass subtracts directly from the payload (actually, it's even worse since it also increases the fuel needed for landing).
Another advantage is that it's better for reuse, as they don't have to spend hours or days restowing legs, recharging deployment cylinders and replacing crush cores.
> The strong gravity of Earth makes the physics of a fully reusable rocket with positive payload margin extremely difficult to solve, which is why it has never been done before.
> Removing the mass of landing legs from the booster and ship by making the tower do the work of final velocity attenuation greatly improves payload margin.
> This architecture also simultaneously substantially increases launch cadence, because the same arms that lift the booster and ship onto the launch stand also catch them, allowing immediate placement of the booster back on the launch stand and the ship back on top of the booster.
The Falcon 9 landing legs were some excellent engineering, but scaled up to the size of starship they would weigh many tons (note the square-cube law makes them more unfavorable proportionally, not just massive considered amsolutely).
This would be a big deal for the booster, but it's absolutely vital for Starship itself because any additional dry mass subtracts directly from the payload (actually, it's even worse since it also increases the fuel needed for landing).
Another advantage is that it's better for reuse, as they don't have to spend hours or days restowing legs, recharging deployment cylinders and replacing crush cores.
> The strong gravity of Earth makes the physics of a fully reusable rocket with positive payload margin extremely difficult to solve, which is why it has never been done before.
> Removing the mass of landing legs from the booster and ship by making the tower do the work of final velocity attenuation greatly improves payload margin.
> This architecture also simultaneously substantially increases launch cadence, because the same arms that lift the booster and ship onto the launch stand also catch them, allowing immediate placement of the booster back on the launch stand and the ship back on top of the booster.