Europe Proposes Starship Alternative With Wings and Mid-Air Recovery

Starship might be running late, but it’s still likely to be the most capable heavy-lift launch vehicle when it’s ready. Europeans looking to develop an alternative that isn’t governed by America or the whims of SpaceX’s CEO have suggested a similar design could be made to deliver a new European-centric heavy-lift vehicle with similar reusable properties.
The RLV C5 design was proposed by researchers at the German Aerospace Center in a new paper published in Springer Nature, in which they analyze Starship and its capabilities from publicly available data. They confirm SpaceX’s own numbers, which suggest it could currently take around 66 US tons to orbit in reusable mode, while future versions could allow for up to about 126 tons with all parts of the rocket recovered.
But it also outlines the idea of a European alternative for countries that want to launch heavy payloads into orbit independently of America. The RLV C5 lift vehicle would use a fully-reusable first-stage booster from the German Aerospace Center’s SpaceLiner sub-orbital concept, with an expendable upper stage. This would require less fuel to carry it into orbit, allowing it to maximize payload—potentially carrying as much as 77 US tons into orbit.
Recovery would be very different from Starship, though. RLV C5 would instead descend into the atmosphere using wings to slow itself to sub-orbital speeds. At the appropriate speed and altitude, it would then be captured by a large, subsonic craft.
This approach would allow RLV C5 to carry up to 74% of its total mass into orbit, rather than the mere 40% payload mass of Starship. It would be smaller, a mere third of the overall weight, and likely far cheaper, too. Without the need for re-entry tiles, additional fuel, and full-reusability, the RLV C5 could fill a niche that Starship would just be overbuilt for, the researchers argue.
The one enormous caveat to all this is that Starship is already flying. It might occasionally explode and leave poison in the atmosphere, but it is flying. The RLV C5 is a mere concept on paper, even if some elements have been worked out as part of other projects.
Any kind of initiative to get this project off the ground would require enormous investment and years of development. However, Europe increasingly feels the need to develop its own launch vehicles as America looks further inward. Getting the ball rolling on something like the RLV C5 would be one way for Europe to become more independent for future space endeavors.
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