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Great point. In a weird way it makes the whole relanding the boosters thing SpaceX did seem like it was obviously within the realm of our capabilities if we wer

Great point. In a weird way it makes the whole relanding the boosters thing SpaceX did seem like it was obviously within the realm of our capabilities if we were ambitious enough. And it makes their next goal of 'catching rockets' seem less ridiculous too.

Sharlin 6y ago
It was always within capacity, the question was just whether it made sense economically compared to dumb boosters. SpaceX was always an extremely-high-stakes gamble that did happen to pay off in the end.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Yup. There were plans to give the Shuttle flyback boosters at various points, but each time it was thought it wouldn't pay off.
  - blackrock 6y ago
    It seems the Space Shuttle’s orange fuel tank should’ve been a flyback booster. It’s fuel was connected to the shuttle main engines via a tube. And the main engines were useless in space, once the tank was de-staged. The tank burned up in the atmosphere. But it would’ve been nice if it flew back and landed instead.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      You'd lose a lot of performance, then, because the tank would have to separate while still containing enough fuel to slow down and come home. You'd make a little bit of it back because the OMS wouldn't have to use thrust to circularize the orbit of the SSME mass or to deorbit it...
      - nickik 6y ago
        You would need to remove the Solid Boosters first to make it worth it. If you do that hydrogen becomes a bad choice. So you should have built an RP-1 or Methane single booster without solids and then you could have done it.
    - nickik 6y ago
      The whole shuttle designs was simply not a good one, it has a lot of compromises and false assumptions. The Soviet version where you simply have a space plane on the side of a independent booster was much better design that had much broader use case. It would have been much easier to build ISS if you had that capability. Remove the Solid Boosters and make the Core Booster better to further reduce risk. Once you are there you can just make the first stage land like SpaceX Falcon 9 does and have the Orbiter land like a plane. Even better to put the Space plane on top of the booster, rather then the side to reduce risk. And if your at that point, you realize you don't need the massive cross range capability, you can remove the massive wings. Then you are already pretty close to SpaceX Starship design.
- bumby 6y ago
  Exactly, the DC-X was a reusable design from the early 1990s. The feasibility was there, the next hurdle was economics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
  - nickik 6y ago
    DC-X was not an orbital reentry booster. The problems are quite different.
    - bumby 6y ago
      Good point and it makes sense now why the project managers work for Blue Origin rather than SpaceX

Sharlin 6y ago

It was always within capacity, the question was just whether it made sense economically compared to dumb boosters. SpaceX was always an extremely-high-stakes gamble that did happen to pay off in the end.

mlyle 6y ago
Yup. There were plans to give the Shuttle flyback boosters at various points, but each time it was thought it wouldn't pay off.
- blackrock 6y ago
  It seems the Space Shuttle’s orange fuel tank should’ve been a flyback booster. It’s fuel was connected to the shuttle main engines via a tube. And the main engines were useless in space, once the tank was de-staged. The tank burned up in the atmosphere. But it would’ve been nice if it flew back and landed instead.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    You'd lose a lot of performance, then, because the tank would have to separate while still containing enough fuel to slow down and come home. You'd make a little bit of it back because the OMS wouldn't have to use thrust to circularize the orbit of the SSME mass or to deorbit it...
    - nickik 6y ago
      You would need to remove the Solid Boosters first to make it worth it. If you do that hydrogen becomes a bad choice. So you should have built an RP-1 or Methane single booster without solids and then you could have done it.
  - nickik 6y ago
    The whole shuttle designs was simply not a good one, it has a lot of compromises and false assumptions. The Soviet version where you simply have a space plane on the side of a independent booster was much better design that had much broader use case. It would have been much easier to build ISS if you had that capability. Remove the Solid Boosters and make the Core Booster better to further reduce risk. Once you are there you can just make the first stage land like SpaceX Falcon 9 does and have the Orbiter land like a plane. Even better to put the Space plane on top of the booster, rather then the side to reduce risk. And if your at that point, you realize you don't need the massive cross range capability, you can remove the massive wings. Then you are already pretty close to SpaceX Starship design.
bumby 6y ago
Exactly, the DC-X was a reusable design from the early 1990s. The feasibility was there, the next hurdle was economics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
- nickik 6y ago
  DC-X was not an orbital reentry booster. The problems are quite different.
  - bumby 6y ago
    Good point and it makes sense now why the project managers work for Blue Origin rather than SpaceX