Well that isn't fully and rapidly reusable. Goddamn. I was starting to feel better about booster reuse soon. Maybe that's still the case, but, man, what the hell is this.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago (9 children)

Booster reuse vs ship reuse is a completely different beast. I am not sure it’s ever going to be viable to reuse the ship economically.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 7 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Yeah, the Spaceshuttle was a cautionary tale and the Ship doesn't seem to have a fundamentally different approach. But lets see how things will develop.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Shuttle was aluminium beneath the thermal tiles, so damage to the tiles was catastrophic. The expectation is Starship will be okay with a few tiles out, partly because steel is much more capable than aluminium, and partly because they have backup thermal protection

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but there it a huge chasm between "catastrophic failure" and "looks good to go again next week", and even minor structural damage will prevent rapid resuse.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'd much rather be on a spacecraft that wore out too soon than one that catastrophically failed

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 8 months ago

Sure, but the rare catastrophic failure issue is not why the Spaceshuttle is widely considered an engineering failure. The real issue with it was that the re-usability of it turned out to be a huge money sink. Spaceship might face a similar fate with those heat-tiles.

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