Comment by wat10000
2 days ago
Merlin and Raptor can both throttle to about 40%. The difference is that Super Heavy has way more engines, so 40% of one engine is a lot less thrust relative to the mass of the nearly empty booster.
Did the suicide burn actually play a role in the various barge-holing events? It’s been a while but I don’t remember that being the hard part.
I was mistaken, Merlins can indeed throttle down. Thanks for correction.
What they cannot is achieve thrust-to-weight ratio of <= 1 when the first stage is empty, so controlled descent is basically impossible and suicide burn is the only option to land.
When it comes to failed returns, I think that at least once they ran out of fuel several meters early(?)