In article ,
stephen voss wrote:
This whole reusable mantra is sentimentality not common sense.
If you can deliver missions using ultracheap and reliable disposable
rockets why do you even need reusable rockets?

If that could be done, then we wouldn't. Trouble is, it can't be. Not
for a definition of "reliable" that would be considered acceptable for any
other form of transportation -- that is, the sort of reliability that is
needed to really open the skies to mankind.

Would you fly on an airline that dropped 1% of its flights in the ocean?
Would you entrust a multi-million-dollar cargo to such an airline? For an
expendable rocket, a loss rate of only 1% is considered excellent; most US
rockets are not that good. This sort of loss rate would be considered
criminal negligence in most other fields.

It has been estimated that if you really sweated manufacturing technology
and such, you *might* be able to get a 0.1% loss rate with expendables.
That would be considered wonderful by today's launch customers, but it is
not good enough for many things people would like to do in space. It's
still orders of magnitude worse than even advanced aircraft.

To do any better, you need systems in which every vehicle can be
flight-tested repeatedly before carrying paying payloads.

You dont need a reusable rocket to launch most satellites.

If all you want to do is to launch "most" satellites, that's true. If
your dreams of what should be done in space go no farther than launching
occasional ultra-expensive communications satellites (and losing 1% of
them), expendables are fine. If you see the night sky as a black wall,
forever closed to most human activities, there's no problem.

As H.G. Wells put it, in "The Country of the Blind": "Their imagination
had shriveled with their eyes."
--
MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |