[pierrebai]

Are the SpaceX boosters that Musk want to land going to orbit? No.

Is the extra fuel needed to make such a landing a big part of going to orbit? No.

The extra weight a enerby needed to land vertically has nothing to do with a 900 factor. Musk's tweet is thus equally disengenuous. It makes it sound like vertical landing a booster for a rocket going to orbit is tremendously harder than what BO did. It is not, it's the same ball park.

[colordrops]

An orbital rocket takes a lot more fuel and has to go a much faster. You are being disingenuous by implying that there is no significant tradeoff when designing a much larger booster designed to take payload into orbit.

[t_fatus]

But they have to carry a lot more load which then goes to orbit, making them much more heavier, hard to control and to land. And indeed the separation velocity is Mach 6 - Mach 10 for Falcon 9, so Space-X booster needs to go faster.