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The space shuttle is a reusable upper stage. The shuttle successfully massively increased the cost of the upper stage by making it reusable falling incredibly s
by parineum 3y ago
The space shuttle is a reusable upper stage. The shuttle successfully massively increased the cost of the upper stage by making it reusable falling incredibly short of it's initial design goals.
- philwelch 3y agoIt’s also a massive stretch to describe the shuttle as “reusable” when the cost to refurbish the orbiter between flights was comparable to the cost of an expendable vehicle.
- mulmen 3y agoIt’s not a stretch at all. That’s the definition of reusable. It might not be economical but that’s a whole other metric. Dismissing a first-of-its-kind state-of-the-art vehicle from the 1970s for not meeting the standards of 50 years in the future isn’t going to lead you to any insightful conclusions.
- philwelch 3y agoIt’s not just that it didn’t meet the standards of today; it didn’t even meet the cost-efficiency goals it was originally intended to.
- mulmen 3y agoIt met the capability requirements though. Including reusability.
- philwelch 3y agoI’m not going to continue to engage because you don’t seem to be engaging in good faith here.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mulmen 3y agoIf you can't engage constructively then that is probably for the best. But you should reevaluate your assessment because you have come to an incorrect conclusion.
- philwelch 3y agoI have engaged constructively this whole time, and you've downvoted every comment of mine you could. (HN doesn't allow you to downvote direct replies to your own comments, and those are the only comments of mine that aren't downvoted, so it's easy to tell.) That indicates bad faith.
- EricE 3y agoAmazing that people are so willing to dismiss economics to be technically correct. Hilariously, that kind of thinking is why we no longer use the shuttle.
- philwelch 3y agoYeah, the whole point of reusability is cost efficiency. If your system is less cost efficient but technically reuses the vehicle, nobody cares (aside from maybe some checkbox-ticking federal bureaucrat).
- mulmen 3y agoNobody is dismissing Economics. It's just not relevant to this conversation.
- mulmen 3y agoThe Shuttle also reused the SRBs which are the first stage. Only the fuel tank was single-use. The Falcon 9 is a (optionally!) reusable first stage but the second stage is discarded.
- numpad0 3y agoThe initial design goals was to build a space cargo plane understandable and acceptable to taxpayers and is capable of capturing a Soviet spy satellite with a mockup left in the orbit all in just one orbit and divert to any standard 747 runway and may be operated by both NASA and USAF. The Shuttle did fulfill something like half of those, just those were pointless goals. But it wasn't reusability alone that made Shuttle a technical failure.