Europe has figured out that Starship is a generation ahead in cargo-to-orbit. Everyone else, including China, is working to catch up... to Falcon 9. On May 2025, Europe mooted something they can do in the interim: a winged booster, which Reusable Launch Vehicle the paper dubbs "RLV C5".
The C5 at least uses tech which Europe has been working on, so there's a base there. Specifically Deutsch: the DLR's SpaceLiner. This paper got to Universetoday last March and it's on ScienceDaily now. Meanwhile all four authors have revisited the theme here (for "RLVC-5").
The Germans independently checked Elon Musk's boasts and, yeah, they confirmed that the 2024-5 Starship was for real. 59 tonnes; and they further predicted that this year's Raptor 3 based booster-and-starship can push this to 115 tonnes. If they don't reuse the booster that goes to a Saturn V tier 188 tonnes. (Once again, that's the SLS ideal of Just Get It Outta Here.)
Since the German booster "SpaceLiner SLB8" is now supporting wings too it is bearing more useless mass toward orbit. This reduces the available cargo on the second-stage. The SpaceLiner would just let that one float for the mission duration. Also the first stage with the wings must burn hydrogen, not methane. Also also the gliding booster gets caught by another aircraft before gently returned to Dusseldorf. Lastly, as of last April the SLB8 was still on the drawing-board; and wings for recovery generally is in low maturity, comparatively.
All that will get their cargo to 70 tonnes. If the second stage chassis counts as cargo that might help.
The RLV C5 does get more "efficiency" however. 74% of mass once-in-orbit is payload; as opposed to the Starship which "is" - meaning, in 2025 was - 40%.
DLR is, I darkly suspect, banking on international agreements sandbagging SpaceX. The pretext will be that methane (and kerosene) expel/s carbon in high atmo.
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