[grecy]

Every time these discussions come up, people immediately come up with "other" suggestions for landing.

Parachutes, "catching" devices, etc. etc.

It all comes down to one thing, and one thing only.

Whatever the solution, it has to work on other planets with no infrastructure on that planet, and it has to leave the booster in a state that it's ready to go again with only a fuel fill up.

[mcbutterbunz]

I was under the assumption the primary reason is reusability on earth only. This would drastically reduce the cost for building new rockets and would decrease turn around time for new launches. Having it work on other planets is a nice plus but there's no demand for that and likely wont be for decades.

[grecy]

> Having it work on other planets is a nice plus but there's no demand for that and likely wont be for decades.

Elon has made it very, very clear and continues to reiterate.

The entire purpose of SpaceX is to get to Mars.

Launching satellites and other near-earth stuff is nothing more than a needed step to achieve the goal.