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Re:Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico by gitfan86 on Thursday June 06, 2024 @01:54PM (#40600379)
If you had extremely big light weight wings it would help, but the materials that can do that don't do well when heated up
Re:Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico by panick21_ on Thursday June 06, 2024 @03:06PM (#40601188)
You also run into issues of what do with the wings on the way up. You can't just put huge ass wings on that thing. You likely need it deploy-able.

And then the wings would also survive the flip and vertical landing. Or if you want to land like a plane, then you also need landing gear.

So there is really no way to add wings without adding a huge amount of mass. You are building a completely new thing.

There are some super cool mega-space planes designed in the 70s (I think). But of course these were never built or even tested. I remember they had some overlapping metal heat shields and a big ass delta wing. They would also start vertically and use air breathing engines.