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So, reusable is supposed to reduce the cost. But the space shuttle was reusable and it has been shutdown because it was too expensive. What is the differences b
by flaburgan 2y ago
So, reusable is supposed to reduce the cost. But the space shuttle was reusable and it has been shutdown because it was too expensive. What is the differences between the two?
- kortilla 2y agoSRB and tank were not re-usable. That’s the equivalent of the first stage you just saw getting caught
- throwaway48476 2y agoShuttle SRB segments were fished from the ocean and refilled.
- baq 2y agoYeah but salt water makes it about as difficult as building from scratch.
- throwaway48476 2y agoThen why didn't they stop?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> why didn't they stop? They did [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_retirement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_retirement
- altcognito 2y agoBeyond the fact that they eventually did quit, the shuttle program was the public face of the US space program, and part of having more than one way to launch military stuff.
- pfdietz 2y agoThe military rapidly gave up on the Shuttle after the first accident. No shuttle was ever launched from the pad on the west coast at Vandenberg (plenty of F9s have been, though.)
- adt2bt 2y agoSRBs were in fact reusable.
- ericcumbee 2y agoThey were but the cost of refurbishment was almost more than just building new boosters. Thats why SLS is currently using Shuttle Derived Boosters but not worrying with reuse.
- YoumuChan 2y agoEconomy of scale: starship can be "mass"-produced Material: stainless steel is much cheaper Percentage of reusability: boosters of shuttle cannot be reused, maintenance of shuttle itself is also very expensive (heat shields were pricey). whereas the starship stack has higher reuse percentage and allegedly cheaper to maintain.
- moffkalast 2y agoThe shuttle was not even reusable by any modern metric, the main tank was always expended, the boosters had to be recovered, fully disassembled and cleaned.
- pfdietz 2y agoI'm not even sure the SRM case segments could be easily reused, given the tremendous stress. They were made of a very high strength steel (maraging steel, with a yield stress of something like 250,000 psi) operated with a safety factor of 1.4.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- noitpmeder 2y agoThis is significantly less expensive
- fragmede 2y agothe space shuttle was "reusable". It had to be taken apart and meticulously cleaned and tested and basically had to be rebuilt after each flight, in a process called turnaround. SpaceX's rockets are much closer to what you'd consider reusable.
- usrusr 2y agoI wonder how much of that difference is because the space shuttle was human rated from the start: F9 eventually got there, but only after plenty of "testing in production" with disposable payloads. The other big difference, an elephant in the room grade difference I think, is that SpaceX reliability was developed with memories of a reusable vehicle failing mostly due to turnaround costs and risks on everyone's minds. That clearly wasn't the case when the space shuttle was designed, they were the first and enjoyed the privilege of making all the beginner mistakes.
- WalterBright 2y agoI had an email exchange with Homer Hickam, before SpaceX existed, where I remarked that the shuttle design looked like a giant kludge, and a winged reentry vehicle was a fundamentally bad design, for various reasons which I enumerated elsewhere in this thread. He emailed back that he agreed with my reasons and had argued that case with NASA in the early stages of the shuttle program. So NASA was aware of this at the time.
- adt2bt 2y agoThink of the word ‘reusable’ in this case as less a binary descriptor but more of a scale of reusability. Yes, both systems are reusable, but there are key differences in the refurbishment of the systems that partly explains the cost difference. It took more labor, resources and time to refurbish the shuttle. Also consider rapid reusability was a stretch goal when it was being designed, but we have come a loooong way since, spacex in particular has had it as a driving competitive differentiator for years now. Another big difference is that NASA post Cold War was a skilled jobs program, with an incentive to do distributed, high overhead work to appease their bosses (congress), while SpaceX has the opposite.
- cubefox 2y ago> Yes, both systems are reusable, but there are key differences in the refurbishment of the systems that partly explains the cost difference. It took more labor, resources and time to refurbish the shuttle. Starship uses essentially the same ceramic heat shield tiles as the Space Shuttle, so the fact the Shuttle had so much trouble with refurbishment doesn't mean that SpaceX has solved these refurbishment issues with the Starship upper stage. Though the Starship lower stage, which contains the most expensive engines, doesn't have this problem. Since it doesn't need a heat shield. So partial reusability should be pretty realistic.
- timschmidt 2y agoShuttle's tiles were each unique. Starship is mostly clad with identical hexagonal tiles which can be mass produced and eventually refurbished by machine. A robot already welds on the tile fittings.
- BurningFrog 2y agoThat was 24,300 unique parts rather than 1!
- cubefox 2y agoNow that's an exaggeration
- credit_guy 2y agoThe main difference is that this is built by a private corporation who can't afford to throw money away, while the Space Shuttle was build by the government, and moreover it had to fulfill a number of conflicting requirements, and commercial profit was not one of them. But on a more technical level. I think the vertical landing is the main difference. Vertical landing was obviously known and done by NASA, this is how the lunar modules landed on the Moon. But doing it on Earth, with vehicles weighing hundreds of times more, I don't think the world had that technical readiness a few decades ago, when the space shuttle was designed. And another major difference is the mass manufacturing idea. From the start SpaceX planned for getting to mass manufacture its rockets. The Falcon rockets are much cheaper than any other alternatives even if you remove the reusability. Then it's the methane burning engines. This was pure old fashioned engineering progress. SpaceX's engines are miracles of rocket engineering. Aside from that, the fuel choice is extremely smart. Methane is better than all other fuels, except for hydrogen. Hydrogen was the fuel of the space shuttle, but it's very tricky to work with. It has very low volumetric density, so the tank of the space shuttle was absolutely humongous. Hydrogen needs to be stored at an absurdly low cryogenic temperature, so this adds to the complexity. And that tank was not reusable, so it adds to the cost.
- haspok 2y agoSpacex might be a private company, but this project is funded by NASA, meaning the American taxpayer. Approved by a person whose last act was this approval before leaving NASA and joining Spacex (effectively putting money in their own pocket). It is also yet to be seen how Starship will ever be profitable (outside of spending government money), who is going to pay for those launches and for what purpose. Other than Starlink, of course.
- throwaway48476 2y agoThe problem is that launch costs went down fast but satellite costs haven't gone down as fast and still have long development timelines. The other problem is the market for satellite services hasn't developed as fast as anticipated, except for starlink.
- inglor_cz 2y agoMassive. The designers of Starship studiously avoided all the problems that made Space Shuttle expensive to refurbish: a. Cheaper, more durable material (stainless steel). b. Cheaper, easier to manufacture engines. c. Easier to use fuel (methane is much "tamer" than hydrogen). d. Standardized heat shield with much smaller requirements for manual work.
- Tepix 2y ago> d. Standardized heat shield with much smaller requirements for manual work. We'll have to see how it works out.
- PaulHoule 2y agoThe way they are going they can try 5 different ones that fail until they find one that doesn't. Contrast that to the Space Shuttle which required a human crew to flight test anything.
- inglor_cz 2y agoIt is a very daunting problem no doubt, maybe the hardest one, but I also don't doubt that the end form of Starship will require way, way less than 20 000 man-hours per turnaround (as the Space Shuttle required) to refurbish the heat shield. They simply cannot afford that.
- _dain_ 2y agoManufacture and maintenance contracts for the Shuttle were deliberately spread out across many companies and states, especially in key congressional districts. It was a jobs programme; waste was a feature not a bug. Same thing for SLS.
- pfdietz 2y agoMore fundamentally, there were contracts. SpaceX does things itself; there's no legal friction internally. This gets back to the "Theory of the Firm" for why firms exist in the first place (transaction costs). The need to codify what work is to be done in contacts is antithetical to SpaceX's rapid development processes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm
- pfdietz 2y agos/contacts/contracts/
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> space shuttle was reusable SpaceX builds vehicles. The Shuttle was “reusable” because they needed a term between the default for transportation capital expenditures (e.g. trains, planes, cars and ships) and the modified missiles that defined post-War spaceflight. “Reusable” in the Shuttle’s context meant months of specialist overhaul time and the cost of a Falcon 9 launch in SRB booster replacements alone [0]. At the end of the day, in 2010, “the incremental cost per flight of the Space Shuttle was $409 million, or $14,186 per kilogram” [1]. ($591mm and $20,512 in 2024 dollars, respectively [2].) SpaceX’s prices per kg are around $3,170 on Falcon 9 [3] and $1,520 for Falcon Heavy [4]. Starship should bring those costs below $1000. [0] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51959.0 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51959.0 [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program [2] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ [3] https://www.spacex.com/media/Capabilities&Services.pdf https://www.spacex.com/media/Capabilities&Services.pdf LEO [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy LEO, theoretical
- vardump 2y ago> Starship should bring those costs below $1000. It might even bring the costs below $100/kg.
- ben_w 2y agoIt might, but it's also at a scale where people can dust off the old plans for orbital rings and ask if this time the economics work out. (My guess is the economics are fine, but the politics would kill it on earth, so the moon or mars will get one, but that's just an interested amateur opinion).
- vardump 2y agoOnce you put something big in the LEO, you'll have to be able to boost its orbit indefinitely, because the orbit will otherwise slowly decay.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoThe Shuttle consisted of the shuttle (orbiter) itself, the external tank (not reusable), and the two boosters which could be reused after ocean recovery. The orbiter itself was slow and expensive to reuse since (among other things) all the heat shield tiles were inspected and 30-100 replaced between each launch. I don't know how much work was done to the engines between launches, but SpaceX's parts and cost reduction on the Raptor engine have to give it an advantage there. StarShip consists of the Super Heavy booster that we saw "caught" today, and the StarShip (orbiter) itself. Having the booster return to launch site vs requiring ocean recovery should potentially increase cadence and reduce cost of reuse. StarShip is also meant to be reusable, although it remains to be seen how that will pan out. On the previous flight there was burn through from inadequate heat shielding - maybe we'll see an improvement with today's vehicle. I'd expect SpaceX to iteratively arrive at a quicker and more cost effective orbiter reuse procedure than NASA had with the shuttle, but how quick remains to be seen. Of course they are planning many of these to go on one-way trips to Mars rather than being reused.
- cubefox 2y ago> The orbiter itself was slow and expensive to reuse since (among other things) all the heat shield tiles were inspected and 30-100 replaced between each launch. Worth noting that Starship's heat shield is very similar to the one of the Shuttle. They actually got the manufacturing method from NASA.
- philistine 2y agoThat's why I remain very skeptical about the easy refurbishing of Starship. Initially, way back around 2016, the plan was to vent liquids to create a cushion around the ship. That sounded more easily reusable.
- cubefox 2y agoYeah. I think they originally planned to use ceramic tiles only for certain spots and still transpiration cooling for the rest. Then they fully switched to ceramic tiles. In an interview with Everyday Astronaut on YouTube, if I recall correctly, Elon Musk said they first believed the ceramic tiles to be lighter.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoStarship is supposed to be fully & rapidly reusable. Neither adjective applies to the space shuttle.
- inemesitaffia 2y agoRead the article "SpaceX flight Ops"
- alemanek 2y agoFalcon 9 has already proven that partial reusability is economical. SpaceX has dominated the entire worldwide launch industry and their competitors are nation states with no need to make a profit. The difference is that they have already proven to be the lowest cost and most reliable launcher due to reuse. This is them lapping the industry with second stage reusability.
- fastball 2y agoShuttle itself was refurbishable, but not rapidly re-usable. It was also incredibly expensive to build and refurbish. A shuttle launch also utilized boosters that were not re-usable. Starship is supposed to be (and clearly well on the way to being) fully rapidly re-usable. That means all stages (in this case two) are re-usable, and that the capital and time required to get either stage flight ready again after a flight should be minimal. Said another way – it is cheaper for SpaceX to build an entirely new Starship + Booster than it was to refurbish a Shuttle between flights, by a factor of about 4x ($90M for a Starship+Booster / $400m for Shuttle refurb).
- fpoling 2y agoThe boosters for the Shuttle were reusable, but it turned out the cost of refurbishing them was similar if not higher than simply building new ones. Plus it contributed to the Challenger crash, see "Mr. Feynman Goes to Washington", https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3570/1/Feynman.pdf https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3570/1/Feynman.pdf
- dyauspitr 2y agoThe difference is only a small part- the shuttle itself- was reusable. The booster that put it into space was scrapped every time.
- ErneX 2y agoThe boosters were not (or at least not with the quick turnover and lower costs like the ones from SpaceX)
- shoxidizer 2y agoYou've got a lot of responses on the difference of reusability, but the shuttle was also more expensive because it had to carry a lot of capabilities with it every time. If you were launching a satellite, you were carrying along the crew compartment and a couple astronauts. If you were bringing a few astronauts to the space station, you brought a cargo bay. And in either circumstance, you brought big wings. Starship can be filled with all cargo. And if you're just changing crew on the ISS, you could... not use Starship and launch a Falcon 9 instead. One of the mission profiles required by the Air Force for the shuttle was that it be able to rendezvous with a satellite, put it in the cargo bay, and return to Earth, all under 2 orbits and along a path that avoided flying over the Soviet Union, which required a rather large turn in-atmosphere to make it back to landing on the west coast.
- pfdietz 2y agoOne of the drivers was the need to Abort Once Around on a polar orbit launch from Vandenberg. The launch site rotates to the east during the orbit so cross range was needed. No such polar orbit launch (abort or otherwise) ever occurred, though.
- dangus 2y agoTo answer this oversimplified question with a simple answer, the Space Shuttle couldn't be a more different vehicle than this one. It truly is a comparison between apples and oranges. Let's start with the fact that it was designed in the 1970's. If you had a Cadillac DeVille from 1970 it would get 8-12 miles per gallon. Just the mere fact that the design is about 70 years old makes that vehicle too expensive to operate, and that's before we even start talking about other issues with the design (performance, safety, reliability, etc).
- modeless 2y agoThe Space Shuttle was not fully reusable as the biggest single part, the orange tank, was destroyed every time. But more importantly, the orbiter and boosters needed 2+ months of refurbishment/rebuilding after every flight. One of the design goals of Starship is for the booster and ship to relaunch with zero refurbishment. To literally land over the launchpad, refuel, and go back to orbit within hours without people even approaching them. The heat shield is the biggest risk to that goal IMO, and we saw today that it definitely sustained serious damage despite improvements. But if they ever get there then per-launch costs will be a tiny fraction of the Shuttle with 6x the payload.
- sobellian 2y agoThe majority of damage to shuttle's TPS apparently came from foam strikes from the external fuel tank. Superheavy's optimized profile certainly helps here, since there are no large cryogenic tanks hanging ominously over the TPS while being shaken violently by solid rocket boosters.
- ijustlovemath 2y agoNo one has answered with one of the biggest issues with the shuttle: each one was extremely custom. Every single heat shield tile was unique to a specific position and a specific shuttle. There were probably over a hundred million individual components in the Shuttle, and with many critical ones being custom, the time to refurbish it for a new launch was much longer. This is in contrast to something like the falcon, which has a very standardized mfg process and components, which allows for really rapid iteration
- cryptonector 2y agoThe shuttle wasn't fully reusable, just for starters. The boosters were reusable with a lot of refurbishment work. The center tank was expended every time. It was very expensive. Only five shuttles were ever made, which means that no effort was put into automation of production of engines etc., everything was custom, and everything required great care to save the sunk costs.
- slashdave 2y agoEarly designs of the shuttle were fully reusable. That was quickly dropped due to costs and requirements. The final shuttle design was also unsafe.
- dools 2y agoBecause people are reflexively averse to government spending unless there's a billionaire making profits on the way through thanks to 100 years of academic capture by Austro-libertarian economists.
- CaptainFever 2y agoThis is an anti-intellectual conspiracy theory. Mainstream economics no longer operate using schools of thought: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/quxwl5/how_is_the_austrian_school_viewed_by_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/quxwl5/how_is...
- dools 2y agoNo, if anything it’s an anti intellectual conspiracy
- kovvy 2y agoReusability increases costs if you don't reuse often enough. The shuttle would have been much, much, cheaper per launch if it had flown more often. The expected costs for the shuttle included a range based on how often it flew which turned out to be reasonably accurate. They were much worse at predicting which end of the range they would be flying in. At the rate they ended up flying they had the extra costs of reusability without any of the benefits. Starship is ludicrously expensive, but still much cheaper than even the best case for the Shuttle, and it has a guaranteed source of launches to help it benefit from resuability.
- jondiggsit 2y agoI’ve read that a shuttle refit after landing was so expensive and time consuming to render it useless…. Feel free to correct if wrong.
- e_y_ 2y agoThe turnaround time for Shuttle was 2-3 months, while building a brand new rocket takes like 1-2 years. Although for the cost of Shuttle, we could have built a whole bunch of expendable rockets, pipelined with a regular launch cadence, and probably also gotten some cost savings through economies of scale.
- pfdietz 2y agoAnd, the market projections that indicated there would be enough payloads for large amounts of launches were also basically fraudulent.
- walrus01 2y agoEstimated costs of the fully loaded cost of the shuttle program ended up at $600 million to $1 billion per flight. The refurbishment costs per flight and man hours/staffing were astronomical. It actually would have been a lot cheaper if they had gone for serialized, mass assembly line production of Saturn V class disposable rockets to launch piece of space stations, satellites and manned missions into low earth orbit.
- jonplackett 2y agoThe main thing is... Space shuttle wasn't all that reusable. It had to be launched with a massive rocket and two massive boosters that just fall into the ocean.
- GuB-42 2y ago> What is the differences between the two? More than 40 years and many lessons learned. SpaceX took advantage of tech from both the US and Russia, including the experience with the Space Shuttle. They have better computers, better metallurgy, advanced 3D printing and their own experience with the Falcon 9. There is no guarantee that it will reduce the costs that much, but will all that experience, the chances are success are higher than with the Space Shuttle. One big issue that isn't talked about much and that SpaceX takes very seriously is simply a lack of demand. There is only so much stuff you want to put in space. Satellites are expensive, and even with disposable rockets, the launch is only a smaller fraction of the cost. It is already a problem with the Falcon 9 as they have a bunch of rockets and not much to do with them. Starlink, orbital refueling, and crazy ideas like earth to earth transport are all ways to address this problem. It was a problem for the Space Shuttle too, they couldn't achieve the economies of scale they planned it for. It was supposed to fly for routine maintenance missions but it didn't work out.
- pfdietz 2y ago> lack of demand What this also means is that if you want to get into the space economy, work on things to do in space, not yet another launch vehicle startup.