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No, that's for a single engine. At landing, the first stage is nearly empty, and thus very light. Even the single center engine alone, throttled as low as it will go (40% or something like that, I don't think we have the exact number for the Merlin-D), produces too much thrust to be able to hover. The Grasshopper and F9R testing vehicles carried extra ballast to be able to hover and descend under thrust without cutting their engines.


That's pretty cool. Makes sense, especially with stage 1 being so light on re-entry that a single engine would have a TWR > 1.




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