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Weight. Legs weigh a lot. That's dead weight for a launch system, and it serves only to reduce payload to orbit.

For Falcon 9 that's not that big a deal because they're NOT trying to reuse the second stage. Whereas with Starship they need more fuel to recover the ship, and that means they need to save weight elsewhere to avoid losing too much payload to orbit.



SpaceX is also not very happy with the pair of forward flaps and 10 ton thermal protection needed as control surface and re-entry.




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