Return of a falcon9 stage fails

[burkhard]

As neat as it is to watch these SpaceX fired landings (regardless of whether they work or not!), the engineer in me always wonders we they don't employ at least some deployable aerodynamic means of creating drag to help slow the descent to offload some of the work from the engines. That could be a parachute or some other sort of other drag element that pops out.

Retaining enough fuel on board to do ALL the deceleration via fired burn adds a WHOLE lot of weight, which is so precious in rockets / lift vehicles. All that "landing fuel weight" reduces the lifting capacity.

I trust they know what they are doing, but it's still really curious to me. They are in the Earth's atmosphere... Why not take advantage of that to at least reduce the landing fuel that needs to be used? The cynic in me thinks the engineers probably wanted to, but Elon Musk told them they couldn't because it wouldn't look as cool on YouTube. :-)