Doesn't "the tyranny of the rocket equation" kind of make the idea of fully propulsive braking systems kind of infeasible?
I know it's possible, but when you have an atmosphere not using it would be just throwing away potential weight that you could be using for the mission at hand.
I'm not rocket scientist, but it sounds like solving that problem using other means (like active cooling) gives you a good amount of weight to play with before it even begins to equal the cost of propulsive braking. And that means you can have a lot of redundancy or can use less efficient but simpler to operate/manufacturer/fix.
I know it's possible, but when you have an atmosphere not using it would be just throwing away potential weight that you could be using for the mission at hand.
I'm not rocket scientist, but it sounds like solving that problem using other means (like active cooling) gives you a good amount of weight to play with before it even begins to equal the cost of propulsive braking. And that means you can have a lot of redundancy or can use less efficient but simpler to operate/manufacturer/fix.