Rick Jones wrote:


I guess I'm still on a chicken-and-egg circle or perhaps thinking too
much about wasting anything but time. Indeed, it isn't worth trying
to figure-out how many times you can successfully launch a booster
before you know you can reliably land one. At the same time though,
there isn't much point to making it possible to land a stage if you
cannot reliably launch it a reasonable number of times.


Both true and false. If you intend to refly them you have to design
them for some minimum number of reflights. You can't add that in
later. So you know they're good for at least that many flights.
Figuring out how far beyond that you can go can be left until later.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw