I think you missed the observation there.<p>Airliners could certainly land with parachutes. They could even glide in for unpowered landings. And doing so would save a lot of fuel in either case. But that fuel savings would come at the cost of adding huge operational complexities, and risks. Powered landings are more precise, more predictable, and more reliable. They reduce operational complexities, even if they are costly, and for that reason they are more than worth the fuel costs. An airplane could carry more weight a farther distance if it glided into landing unpowered, but effectively all landings would become emergency situations, and it&#x27;s just not worth the small benefit of increasing payload.<p>The same is true in orbital rocketry as well. Parachutes may seem like a good idea, but they increase recovery complexity and costs, they increase the likelihood of damage to the rocket, they reduce predictability, and so on. Powered landings are the most dependable way of ensuring the stage can be returned and of doing so within an operational profile that can be streamlined and optimized until its very reliable and efficient, just like landing a plane. The fact that it comes at some cost of payload capacity is comparatively inconsequential, as it substantially increases the likelihood of recovering the tens of millions of dollars worth of launch vehicle hardware (which over its lifetime will service launches worth hundreds of millions of dollars).