> Because Europa Clipper needs a lot of energy to start it on its interplanetary trajectory to Jupiter, the rocket for this launch will be fully expendable, with the exception of a recoverable fairing. This means that there will be no return of first-stage boosters for this launch. Although SpaceX has flown a fully expendable Falcon Heavy before, this is the first time that NASA’s Launch Services Program is launching a mission for the agency with this Falcon Heavy configuration, though the program has extensive experience now with both expendable as well as reusable rockets. In addition to not recovering any boosters, technicians removed components only needed for reuse to increase the performance of the rocket, to launch the largest planetary spacecraft NASA has ever developed and give it the power it needs to travel to Jupiter.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/europaclipper/2024/10/14/nasa-launch-...
Since you have to have a burn to slow down and land you have to carry extra fuel to recover. That's always going to be the case, but starship is making strides towards minimizing that as much as possible with belly flops and chopsticks
So, for any rocket, flying it reusably is going to mean not using the full capacity.
Future launches with Starship, analogous to this one, would refuel their upper stage in orbit to their full capacity, so there would be no performance downside to recovering boosters; you would need more launches, but they would all be reusable.
[a] https://elvperf.ksc.nasa.gov/Pages/Query.aspx (I queried for a high-energy orbit with a C3 of 42 km^2/s^2, which I think is correct, or at least very close)
https://blogs.nasa.gov/europaclipper/wp-content/uploads/site...
However for this type of mission that would still leave the question of "What if we skipped re-usability and paid more to expend the launcher? Could we launch a larger payload and/or get there faster?"
The trajectory for this mission was already a slower transit time than the alternate plan of launching it on the SLS rocket. I think for some missions that are infrequent and targeting far-away destinations there will always be a desire to maximize performance at the cost of reusability on that singular launch.
But in future you would potentially have special boost stage for that. See something like Impulse Space is building.
But for these really powerful throws, its probably just cheaper to just drop an upper stage. Upper stages are a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of a flagship mission. A Falcon 9 upper stage is only a couple million $.