[reddog]

Except that the space shuttle solid rocket boosters were recovered and reused.

From Wikipediea: "Out of 270 SRBs launched over the Shuttle program, all but four were recovered – those from STS-4 (due to a parachute malfunction) and STS-51-L (destroyed by range safety during the Challenger disaster).[6] Over 5,000 parts were refurbished for reuse after each flight. The final set of SRBs that launched STS-135 included parts that had flown on 59 previous missions, including STS-1.[7] Recovery also allowed post-flight examination of the boosters,[8] identification of anomalies, and incremental design improvements"

Also the rockets on the shuttle itself were landed and reused.

[ktpecot]

Calling the shuttle reusable is such a massive stretch. It’s like the shuttle of Theseus they basically had to rebuild it every time and it cost something like 1.5 billion dollars. Basically could’ve built a brand new rocket every time.

[dylan604]

Recovery of the first stage of SpaceX rockets is not even close to being the same thing as reuse of the shuttle. Surviving re-entry is a completely different set of specs than floating through atmosphere at a much much slower rate of descent.

[ktpecot]

I mean from a technological point of view sure, but that just shows how bad the design was(compared to what we know now). The falcon program shows that it’s obviously way more economical to just ditch the 2nd stage and reuse the booster. F9 launches cost sub 20 million and a shuttle launch costs on the order of a billion. Squabble over whatever details you want about performance or who had to do what R&D but F9 is clearly in a different league.

[dylan604]

> Squabble over whatever details you want about performance or who had to do what R&D but F9 is clearly in a different league.

Falcon 9 First launch attempt 2007 [0]

Shuttle First launch 1981 [1]

I wonder if there's an advantage to having 26 years of watching someone else before designing yours? You also act like the rockets from the shuttle were not reused. They always (except for 2 instances) came back with the shuttle. The SRBs were also recovered, so it's not like these were wasted.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle

[ktpecot]

I’m not disputing SpaceX had the advantage of learning from peoples mistakes. And I’m not arguing that they didn’t physically get the engines and boosters back I’m just saying that calling the space shuttle and F9 both reusable may be semantically true but is really not giving an accurate representation.

[dylan604]

SpaceX is also contributing to the increasing amounts of space junk. How long is the second stage just floating around after delivering payloads? Once the shuttle delivered payloads, it just left nothing but space.

[mlindner]

They also lugged a large amount of extra dry mass into space because of the mass of the orbiter. The part that was least important to re-use and most expensive to re-use is the part that was re-used the most.

[dylan604]

maybe, but it was the coolest part to re-use. whatever inefficiencies the shuttle had that people squabble over, it was a very inspiring program. not sure how much inspiration to a small kid a SpaceX launch is, but i know exactly how much the shuttle was.

[drusepth]

>not sure how much inspiration to a small kid a SpaceX launch is, but i know exactly how much the shuttle was.

From what I've seen, it sounds like many kids these days feel the same way about SpaceX launches now as you did about the shuttle (incredibly inspiring). I hope that's reassuring.

[dylan604]

it is. i know that i flew my shuttle around my room much more than my apollo rockets. my fighter jets had a hard time keeping up with the shuttle in my room too. i once saw footage of the "chase" planes as the shuttle screamed past them on approach. just so much more "cool" to the shuttle than a capsule.

[zugi]

> inefficiencies the shuttle had that people squabble over, it was a very inspiring program

Exactly. The shuttle program was designed by bureaucrats to be "inspiring." Which explains why it was such a dismal failure economically and in turns of safety - killing 14 people which is far more than any other rocket, and costing insanely more than expendables.

The shuttle program set the U.S. space program back by decades. We are only now finally starting to recover from its dismal failure.

[panick21_]

It wasn't designed to be inspiring. That is nonsense. Non of the designers involved would ever claim that's what they did.

It was designed in an environment they couldn't iterate and test, and tried to go from very little knowlage directly to a massively complex system.

And no only that, they were very limited in terms of funding, so anything that required to much development had to be kicked.

[mannerheim]

What do kids have to do with anything? The goal is to get to space affordably and reliably; the shuttle failed on both fronts SpaceX is succeeding at.

[dylan604]

>What do kids have to do with anything?

What do kids ever have to do with anything? They are the next generation that may or may not want to be involved in whatever they might be getting inspired by.

>The goal is to get to space affordably and reliably; the shuttle failed on both fronts SpaceX is succeeding at.

Shuttle had ~135 missions (number from memory) with 1 failure at launch. The second failure was at re-entry, so assumption is that the mission deployed whatever was being deployed (if that was part of the mission). How many missions has SpaceX lost payloads on? >1? If we do percentages, sure, but to say that 1 failure at launch is unreliable is just farcical.

[mlindner]

Rockets landing vertically is the most sci-fi thing ever and has been a staple of science fiction since the early 20th century. I think that's plenty more cool than landing it horizontally.

Anyway, coolness factor doesn't really matter for space. Economical things also tend to end up looking cool over time anyway simply because streamlined designs which are efficient tend to also look cool..

[SilverBirch]

Daddy, when I grow up, I want to grab massive government subsidies and attack trans-people, just like Elon…

[_0w8t]

The first stage of SpaceX is the most expensive part with nine engines. The second stage is just single engine. Plus SpaceX reuse fairings and the Dragon is also reusable. So re-usable parts are like 95% and expendable parts are vastly cheaper than Shuttle refurbishing.

[sdifognoinio]

This number is total nonsense. It is derived from simply dividing the total cost of the program by the number of launches. This is useless. First, the R&D costs were sunk all the way back in the '70s. Second, the cost of personnel, operations, and facilities do not necessarily scale with the number of launches.

NASA put the cost of a launch at about $450 million in 2011, but that is pessimistic. That is simply the years cost divided by the number of launches in that year. The marginal cost, i.e. the cost of going from N launches to N+1, will always be lower. The Shuttle was designed to fly 24 missions per year and actually flew an average of under five missions per year. The lack of demand was a substantial reason for the high cost.

I find it tedious that every conversation on this topic has to start with the same tired old memes. No, the Shuttle did not cost $1.5 billion per launch. No, reusable launch vehicles are not new. No, not even reusable launch vehicles that land vertically under power are new. No, the price to LEO has not fallen by an order of magnitude. No, ULA is not dead in the water. No, neither is Ariane. Yes, the Shuttle program was badly mismanaged. Yes, the Falcon 9 is pretty cool.

[allenrb]

Mostly the heavy steel booster cases were reused, iirc. I don’t believe the reuse process was ever cost-effective. As for the Shuttles themselves, so much inspection and refurb was required that it made reuse look unattractive.

SpaceX is getting the entire first stage back in mostly flight-worthy condition. Nobody outside the company truly knows how much work is done between flights but it appears to be vastly less than Shuttle.

[bumby]

>mostly flight-worthy condition.

Can you expand on this? I've looked for information on how much rework they require but have never come up with a good explanation. I'm curious because spaceflight requirements are typically very stringent and refurbishing back to those requirements isn't a trivial task. A lot of the cost for Shuttle was refurbishing to meet the quality requirements.

[93po]

I could be wrong but I believe they use brand new first stages for any manned mission because the stakes are higher. And they allow customers to elect for a brand new first stage at added cost. So the standards for refurbishment may be not quite as strict for regular payload/resupply missions because worst case scenario you're blowing up tens of millions of dollars of equipment/supplies instead of 3 human beings.

[Faark]

I remember this as well, generally for nasa launches, initially. But certainly isn't the case anymore for commercial crew.

B1061 launched both Crew-1 & Crew-2, B1067 both Crew-3 & Crew-4 (with a commercial launch in-between). Crew-5 was new and Crew-6 seems to be planned as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...

[93po]

Nice, good to know. Thanks!

[bumby]

This makes sense and falls inline with how NASA has always ratcheted up requirements as the risk increases. The highest risk level is human-rated flight, but they also gauge things like payload cost and "one-of-a-kind" nature of payloads.

[93po]

I think someone more familiar with this than me could look at the cost of a Falcon 9 launch with a re-used first stage and compare it to a non-re-used first stage launch cost and make some assumptions/ballpark guess about how much work goes into refurb.

[ploxiln]

I didn't know the SRB components were also re-used!

It's a useful clarification that the Space Shuttle program had a large amount of reuse in the design ... but it still cost over a billion dollars for each reuse, many multiples of e.g. fully expended soyuz. So until SpaceX proved that reuse could be done well, and economically, it wasn't obvious. Now it's super obvious and practically all space programs are frantically trying to catch up.

(The SS could carry fairly large ISS module payloads into orbit, while cheaper rockets/spacecraft couldn't ... but couldn't get to high orbits or beyond ... details details.)

[_0w8t]

There are estimates that the production cost of Soyuz is less than 20 millions USD, https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/48592/what-is-the-...

It is not clear if SpaceX is there per flight. They still need to spent several weeks on refurbishing of the landed booster.

[Faark]

We should keep in mind that Soyuz is the name of both a manned space capsule (like dragon / cst100), but also a rocket family (like falcon).

You link seems to be specifically about Soyuz MS, a capsule. No idea how much SpaceX spends on refurbishing dragon.

[Robotbeat]

Several weeks on-site vs years in a factory on the other side of the country. It’s a clear win. Marginal per launch cost is on the order of $15 million, including the price of a new upper stage. More full cost including GSE and amortization on the booster and fairing more like $25 million.

[zugi]

You are right that no one knew that Space X's approach would work until they demonstrated it. However, it was clear that the shuttle's "reuse" approach was a dismal failure early on - even before it was built, the sheer mass shuttled to and from orbit every time was a giant red flag to anyone who understands the basic rocket equation. That also drastically limited its altitude and usefulness. In a world where practicality matters, it should have been abandoned early on in favor of a return to expendables, until we figured out something that actually worked.

[justapassenger]

No outsider knows if Falcon reuse is economical. SpaceX keeps on raising money (they have a lot of going on, so that’s not surprising) and without insight into financials we don’t known if their launches are subsidized by VC money.

[sdifognoinio]

I think another factor many people neglect is that SpaceX benefits from economies of scale. SpaceX launches very large rockets and launches them very often. Large rockets and a regular cadence are both known to reduce the cost per ton to orbit. SpaceX has the ability to put a whole lot of tonnage in orbit and this immense capacity means they can do it cheaply.

However, this only works if there is enough demand to use all their capacity. At the moment this demand simply does not exist. SpaceX manufactures its own demand. The majority of its capacity goes to launching its own satellites. This lets it keep its cadence, but literally burns the company's own resources to do so.

Whether or not you think Starlink makes any sense in the long run, at the moment it is losing money hand over fist. It serves as an indirect subsidy for SpaceX's other customers.

[mlindner]

They weren't fully re-used as each shuttle booster ejected the engine nozzle right before impact with the water. Additionally, they had to be disassembled before re-filling with fuel. It was re-manufacturing versus re-use.