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The main booster (all three of them) were attached to the orbiter and were re-used, though not without refurbishment. (Falcon 9 is also refurbished after each
by syncsynchalt 6y ago
The main booster (all three of them) were attached to the orbiter and were re-used, though not without refurbishment. (Falcon 9 is also refurbished after each launch).
- TeMPOraL 6y agoThe shuttle had two boosters, not three. It also had an external tank that burned in the atmosphere. The boosters were technically reusable, but refurbishing them after the corrosive bath they've taken by their landing in the ocean was much more expensive than making new ones from scratch. You'll note that SpaceX lands their rockets on a barge, instead of landing them on water and fishing them out later - that's because they want to keep the salt water out of the rocket.
- syncsynchalt 6y agoI think I've confused my terminology, as "main booster" usually means the first stage as a whole, but I used it to refer to the individual SSMEs. But I think _you're_ referring to the SRBs. In both cases (SSME and SRB) they were re-used in some fashion, though I agree the SRB re-use was not a good solution.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoYeah, SSMEs didn't have contact with salt water and were easier to refurb :). In general, they were a work of art. I thought you meant SRBs because they too were advertised as reusable, even though in practice, they weren't.
- m4rtink 6y agoThe Sovirt Buran shuttle had 5 boosters - the main Energia hydrolox core stage and 4 modified Zenit boosters. There were even plans to land the boosters and reuse them, the main issue being how to get the massive boosters back from the endless wateland around Baykonur. Also unlike the Space Shuttle, the 5 boosters did all the orbital boosting, Buran only had small orbital correction engines on board (like Shuttle OMS), all big engines were down on the boosters.