whatthehand • 1 day ago • Edited 1 day ago

Seriously. It seems like contemporary space (more specifically spacex) fans talk about reusing rockets as if this is like reusing towels or something.

For the reasons you mention and more, reuse has got very limited use at best. And until we see a series of audited financials that dig deep down into specific areas of their business, we can't even confirm the supposedly game-changing economics of it all. Spacelaunch is about as niche of a task as there could be. It's not analogous to reusing towels or toothbrushes or cars or even airplanes. ...
...
From the layperson all the way to NASA, which itself so clearly seemed to doubt their choice even within their own initial selection statement for HLS. Even u/MrPennywhistle in his ever optimistic and infectious enthusiasm helped inadvertently spread a really bizarre belief that has since taken on a new life in popular space discourse: mainly, the strange understanding that there's somehow more to be learned by rapidly, carelessly, prematurely and DELIBERATELY destroying hugely expensive and underdeveloped test-articles. I think it was following AMOS-6 and what he meant to communicate was that having a failure prior to your main mission is a saving grace to be taken advantage of: that there's much to be learned when things go kaboom by accident. Instead it's become a thing where people literally cheer their lungs out when they see a fractional prototype of a giant and expensive craft (that Artemis is desperately banking on) fail catastrophically and tear itself into a million pieces right before their eyes because "tHeReS sO mUcH DaTa! ... //

LukeNukeEm243 • [10 hr. ago][1] • Edited 10 hr. ago
The hit to payload because of reuse isn't much of an issue because you can design the rocket to be as big as you need in order to get the payload into its desired orbit. Sure, it results in a larger, more complex rocket for the same mass of payload, however you won't have to throw the entire thing away after one mission, which will result in lower costs.

SpaceX has hit their aspirational goal of 10 reuses per booster with Falcon 9 and they are continuing beyond it. Their most used boosters have been used 17 or 18 times. They have reused 39 boosters to date, for a total combined 251 landings. Right now they have a successful landing streak of more than 116 since 2021.

This year they have launched only 4 new boosters, the other 81 launches used previously-flown boosters. Similar story for last year when they only launched 4 new boosters, while launching 56 times with reused boosters. For comparison, ULA has so far launched only 3 times this year, and 8 times last year.

SpaceX is operating on an entirely different level than the rest of the launch providers. [They are launching more mass per quarter than the rest of the world combined][2]. Is it a coincidence that they just so happen to be the only launch provider doing reuse at the moment?

As for destructive testing, it is their preferred method because it allows for changes to be made more easily and they can find unknown flaws quicker. They could spend years developing and reviewing the design of Starship so that it would likely work perfectly on the 1st time like SLS. Or they could test the design they have, see what goes wrong with it, and then make improvements to the problem areas for next time. Also these prototypes are way cheaper than an operational rocket like SLS which costs like $2.1 billion alone to launch. I mean, SpaceX is only going to get about $3 billion total from NASA for the first lunar lander and its development. That money is spread out across all the various development milestones. The fixed-price contract incentivizes SpaceX to work efficiently with both their time and money.

And the reason the SpaceX employees and fans cheer during test launches is because the prototypes are: 1- very cool to see (it's like Kerbal Space Program in real life) and 2- they show visible signs of progress. IFT1 tested the launch infrastructure, the quick disconnects were successful and the rocket made it past the tower, SuperHeavy had never flown before that. IFT2 demonstrated even more progress with the deluge system protecting the pad, all engines running nominally through to the hotstage separation, and Starship almost making it to its intended trajectory.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SmarterEveryDay/comments/189vh8h/comment/kbzgf6h/

[2] https://twitter.com/BryceSpaceTech/status/1720153323393663411