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by fastball
611 days ago
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Shuttle 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). |
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