"Michael Gallagher" wrote in message
...
[carbon copy of this message being e-mailed to the man himself]

Hi, All..

Saw Thomas Frieling's piece in Spaceflight. Very nice!

No strong feelings either way on whether the shuttle should be ultimately
replaced by either a manned capsule or a small spaceplane, but this brings
up a question I've had in mind for a long time:

Would it be possible to build a reusable CAPSULE? Obviously, it would be
launched on an ELV and still have a disposable SM, but why not build a
series of capsules that can be used repeatedly and save a little money?
The
reusability concept must have some validity to it!


It is certainly possible. The bigger question is whether it is cost
effective. According to a number of articles I've seen over the years, NASA
found that returned Apollo capsules were in surprisingly good condition, and
actually did give some thought to reuse. It was not pursued because of the
limited scope of the program and the adequate number of capsules
manufactured and available at the time. I have occasionally wondered if
Russia reuses any Soyuz components. They don't as far as I know, but I
have never seen it discussed one way or the other. One would think that a
certain amount of hardware (e.g. radios and the like) should be readily
reusable, regardless of the bigger issue of the capsule itself.