4 ms·

Except the entire thing is reusable!

• stetrain 6y ago
  Except the Falcon 9 second stage is not reusable. Shuttle had an advantage since the orbiter was both first and second stages. The orange fuel tank was lost on each mission, and the solid rocket boosters were recovered and refurbished after a swim in the ocean. So by some measures the Shuttle system was very reusable, but the complexities of the system resulted in high costs to tear down, inspect, and refurbish between flights.
  • valuearb 6y ago
    SRBs weren’t reused; some of their parts were. Hitting the ocean at 200 MPH and floating in corrosive saltwater damaged them pretty significantly. It would have been cheaper to build new ones.
    • stetrain 6y ago
      The number I can find is 76 feet per second, or about 50mph. They had parachutes. My understanding is that refurbishment meant basically stripping them for parts and using them to build new boosters, but still a significant amount of percentage re-use of parts. It just highlights how important the amount of type of required refurbishment is to making re-usability actually practical. Falcon 9 is noteworthy because it's relatively inexpensive up-front compared to traditional boosters, relatively simple in design and part count (compared to STS) and relatively quick and inexpensive to re-use.
• brianwawok 6y ago
  Like 80%, there is still a few parts that get thrown out. Still a HUGE leap.