Europe Proposes Starship Alternative With Wings and Mid-Air Recovery

Starship might be running late, but it's still likely to be the most capable heavy-lift launch vehicle when it's ready. Europeans looking to develop an alternative that isn't governed by America or the whims of SpaceX's CEO have suggested a similar design could be made to deliver a new European-centric heavy-lift vehicle with similar reusable properties.

The RLV C5 design was proposed by researchers at the German Aerospace Center in a new paper published in Springer Nature, in which they analyze Starship and its capabilities from publicly available data. They confirm SpaceX's own numbers, which suggest it could currently take around 66 US tons to orbit in reusable mode, while future versions could allow for up to about 126 tons with all parts of the rocket recovered.

But it also outlines the idea of a European alternative for countries that want to launch heavy payloads ...