Quote:
Originally Posted by Wormius
So, not knowing much about these, what makes them being reusable so much better? I take it they need go through so much QA/QC after each launch that wouldn’t it make sense to recycle them and use new rockets?
|
Cost basically. Costs far less to refurbish/re-certify one than to build an entirely new one. I've heard that it costs 10% the cost of a new Falcon 9 to refurbish one. That compounds pretty fast. Even if it isn't quite that good, and even if Starship never ends up in a same day turnaround the reusability reduces cost of putting things into orbit.
Just wondering how long until they just stick a normal expendable 2nd stage on the Starship booster and call it a day.
Starship has always looked weird to me anyway, when looking at the internals the amount of space for a payload seems pretty small.. how would you lift a Hubble 2 with it for example? You couldn't. I guess they could eventually change the form factor but at this point it seems designed only to launch Starlink satellites with the tiny payload door.