If a starship full of fuel is in orbit, and gets nudged downward, hitting the earths atmosphere, it gets very hot. If it doesn’t have a giant heatshield, it will vaporize the fuel, leading to an explosion in the upper atmosphere. If you used the fuel to slow down, you could reach earth with mostly empty tanks, but still cause some damage if you hit a city.
It seems to me like fuel wise, a starship has enough full to start from earth, go to orbit and then come down with one tank. Most of the fuel is expended on launch. While you will need to expend some fuel to slow down, I don’t see why the starship shouldn’t be able to touch earth with a lot of fuel inside.
If a starship full of fuel is in orbit, and gets nudged downward, hitting the earths atmosphere, it gets very hot. If it doesn’t have a giant heatshield, it will vaporize the fuel, leading to an explosion in the upper atmosphere. If you used the fuel to slow down, you could reach earth with mostly empty tanks, but still cause some damage if you hit a city.
It seems to me like fuel wise, a starship has enough full to start from earth, go to orbit and then come down with one tank. Most of the fuel is expended on launch. While you will need to expend some fuel to slow down, I don’t see why the starship shouldn’t be able to touch earth with a lot of fuel inside.