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Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

Actually, reusability was an obvious idea from the start. For example the Space Shuttle and the McDonnell Douglas DC-X are examples of attempts at reusability in the USA, and other countries had their own experiments.

It just became non-obvious that it was the right approach after a long history of failed attempts at it.

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The Shuttle was the only serious attempt. And even then, they dropped the largest structural part and used solids that can't practically be reused anyway. The DC-X is just a research project, that they would ever develop a reusable launch was basically fantasy.

The same in other countries, very little actual large investments.

The Soviet Shuttle was even less reusable then the US one. And that was actually pretty smart of them.

So I don't think that were that many real failed attempts. There was practically speaking one real attempt.

I would argue there were far too few actual previous attempts at reusability. :P

All the while many early concepts from the dawn of the space age often had some sort of partial or even full reusability as part of the design.

Did it not pan out as other things suggested back then as it was not realistic with the technology of the time ?

Or was it perhaps due to usable space rockets mainly developing from ICBMs, which were single use munitions ? The military was also not that cost sensitive, especially at the top of the Cold War + possibly pushing on putting stuff to space sooner than the other side, instead of experimenting with some newfangled reusability concepts.

Well, in any case good thing this is over & things are finally at the right track. :)

it was always the "Right approach" and everyone knew that there was nothing in the laws of physics that prohibits this. But you are writing that as if it's still be solved.

No one has ever had a fully reusable orbital rocket.. still to this day. Althought starships got a shot.

It should be noted that reusable rockets are fundamentally less cargo per trip than non-reusable ones, since the reusable rockets have to carry extra fuel for re-entry. The sweetspot of having enough mass to orbit so that this reduced capacity is still worth it is not at all easy to reach.

In general, if rocket building costs could really be reduced to almost nothing, reusable rockets would be useless. The only case where reusable rockets have a chance is if building rockets is still very expensive.

Even if building rockets can be cheap, not all rockets/use-cases can be solved cheaply.

or if you can reduce the total cost of the payload.

That's what blue orgin is doing with the blue ring concept. Take avionics, data telemetry, battery's, and solar panels out of the design and let the customer focus on what end goal they are trying to achieve. I think blue ring is a very good business innovation as well.

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