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Out of curiosity, does anyone know what happens to the solar panels that are shown in the animation when it docks to the ISS? They are disconnected before retur
by xur17 12y ago
Out of curiosity, does anyone know what happens to the solar panels that are shown in the animation when it docks to the ISS? They are disconnected before returning to earth. All of the stages are reused - are the solar panels thrown away?
- dnautics 12y ago2nd stage and trunk are not reused (I think). Cost-wise solar panels are not that expensive, they're mostly silicon doped with germanium (and other elements).
- XorNot 12y agoYou gotta wonder if you couldn't just keep hooking them up to the ISS. Just send up more and more solar panels.
- ceejayoz 12y agoIIRC Chris Hadfield recently noted in a Reddit IMA that power isn't an enormously constrained resource for them on the ISS. The hassle of saving and installing them might not be worth it.
- InclinedPlane 12y agoThere are still throwaway parts to the stack at present. The 2nd stage isn't reused and the trunk is disconnected and burns up in the atmosphere. For now that's not such a huge deal, as both are fairly inexpensive components comparatively.