[Terr_]

> repurpose rockets in their whole

Reminds me of a short sci-fi story:

> The engines are part of the orbiter, so they can be brought home and reused. The solid boosters drop off minutes after liftoff and are recovered for refurbishment. Even the unmanned heavy-lift cargo launchers use the same basic system. But until our group came along, the huge external tanks were simply dumped, after fueling the shuttle to almost orbital velocity.

> [...] The main purpose of the design is simply to keep the tanks from falling. The two massive ends of the Farm act like a dipole in the gradient of the Earth's gravitational field, so each deck winds up orbiting edge-forward, like a flat plate skimming. This reduces the drag caused by the upper fringes of the atmosphere, extending our orbital lifetime.

https://www.davidbrin.com/tankfarm.htm