[thinkingkong]

The shuttle itself was reusable but the two solid rocket boosters and the external fuel tank were all disposable components.

[anonymars]

False, in fact most of the Artemis I booster segments were previously flown on one or more shuttle missions

https://cdn.northropgrumman.com/-/media/wp-content/uploads/a...

[vFunct]

The space shuttles boosters were reused. So, literally every engine in the shuttle was reused. Wild what NASA did 40 years ago…

[ricardobeat]

The parts were reused but they rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, everytime. Reusability means something like a plane: refuel + safety checks and you’re good to go again

[vFunct]

Yes the boosters were fully reused. Thanks.

[panick21_]

That's kind of ridiculous and pedantic. In a solid fuel rocket, the solid fuel is most of the complexity and most of the cost. The rocket flys because of how the solid fuel is shaped and engineered.

Reflying the booster cases doesn't change the fact that an essentially new solid booster has to be manufactured.

In fact it didn't even financially make sense to reuse the boosters, so it was actually worse then not being reusable at all.

As with everything with Shuttle, it all sounds cool when you imagine it, but then if you look at the actual program its basically a 40 shit-show that started very badly and basically never got better. In actual fact, it failed completely as an industrial program for the US.

[DarmokJalad1701]

> Wild what NASA did 40 years ago…

You can do that when you have $1b/flight to spend on refurbishing.

[SoftTalker]

And all designed in the 1970s.