"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
They did studies on the cost of recovering the SRBs and reusing them vs.
using new-build ones based on the actual costs encountered during the
Shuttle program, it was a bit cheaper to reuse them (I imagine that the
involved inspection process after each flight is fairly expensive), but
not all that much cheaper than using new-build ones.

While this may not be such a great thing economically, it's certainly nice
to inspect them after every flight. After the redesigned solid rocket
booster joints started flying (post-Challenger), NASA was able to inspect
those joints after each and every flight to insure that the problem was
really fixed.

If they weren't being reused, there would be economic pressure to not
recover the flown boosters in order to save money. This could result in
disaster if any change in the manufacture of the boosters (intended or not)
started to cause problems, since you might not notice signs of the problem
until another launch vehicle was lost.

Safety is certainly a good reason to keep reusing SRB's, even if it saves
little money to reuse them.

Jeff
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