Originally Posted by
netstruggler
But how much of that 418 tons is only there to lift the 32 tons up into orbit?
If I remember correctly, Musk has said that reusing the first stage cuts the payload by about 30%? Which is still a big win if you can safely reuse it even two or three times without major refurbishment.
From what I've read, they did find a problem with one of the engines when they test-fired the first recovered stage. But that's the kind of issue where you need to recover a few stages for analysis to fully debug it.