In article ,
says...

Rick Jones wrote:


Indeed. My point I suppose is similar to your question at the end -
why did they take so long to start when they could have started with a
non-recovered stage? The only thing that comes to mind, and I suppose
it is a non-trivial consideration, is that the recovered stage is
comparatively inexpensive compared to a never-flown one. Some
customer has already paid for its construction.


I thought someone had already offered a pretty reasonable explanation
for that. Until you've shown you can recover a high enough percentage
of boosters to make reuse worthwhile, why spend the money on the test
firing program? That's not exactly cheap, either.

I believe that was me. First things first. Gantt charts and whatnot
(which my managers usually take care of, since I'm a technical guy).

Jeff
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