I’ll watch this later when I have enough time. But its important to note that Elon Musk’s aura of invincibility / charity has been pierced, and now big-name talk shows like John Oliver feel safe to actually talk about Musk’s issues now.
I certainly don’t always agree with John Oliver, but this is a huge step forward for the mainstream media to finally start recognizing the Musk problem.
Do you mind providing additional info on previous reusable rockets. I’m not able to find any successfully reused rockets prior to the Falcon 9.
Edit: The space shuttle doesn’t count as a reusable rocket.
Edit 2: Humanity as only achieved partial reusability so far. SpaceX will likey be the first to achieve full reusability with their Starship. Of course credit for this should not go to Elon but to Gwynne Shotwell and the rest of the SpaceX team.
You must have missed the part of my post where I give credit to Shotwell, but just so it’s crystal clear I think Elon is a loser who has stolen his success from the intelligent people who work for him.
Now if you would be so kind as to answer my original question, since I am genuinely curious.
Shotwell is a liar for Musk and just as culpable as him for SpaceX’s marketing liberties.
As for your first (easily researched) question.
First fully private space transport company- OTRAG in 1975
First government “spin-out” Arianespace in 1980
First commercial rocket- Conestoga in 1982
First commercially successful rocket- Pegasus from Orbital Sciences Corporation founded in 1982, IPO in 1990. First Pegasus launch in 1990.
First fully vertically integrated (business) commercial rocket company - Beal Aerospace in 1997
Space Vector was working on DARPA FALCON in 2002 as Musk was looking for staff. Perhaps this is where the name came from?
The reason most companies started focusing on expendable vehicles again was NSDD 42 issued by Reagan in 1982 requesting expendable launch vehicles from suppliers. There was also the issue of needing to launch maximum payload, which made carrying fuel for recovery a non-starter.
Lockheed performed a study on reusability in the 1960s to see if it was economically feasible to reuse launch vehicles for everything from a space station to a moon base. So this idea was not new, not unknown, and not experimented with.
The ROMBUS study from 1964 demonstrated the potential to have reusable orbital modules and shuttles. Launches would use a modular vertical takeoff and landing (stop me when this sounds familiar) system. ROMBUS’s design reads basically like Starship, and it’s from 1964.
SpaceX has failed by their own benchmark to have a commercially viable reusable vehicle, since their refit times are still three weeks and they can’t recover fairings or upper stages still. There’s no cost justification to do this, so it’s an obvious priority to cancel.
Resuable Vehicles
- Russian R-1B missile was fully recoverable and resuable. In 1951.
- X33 VentureStar SSTO
- X34
- X43
- Shuttle first stage
- Shuttle SRB
- SpaceShip One
- SpaceShip Two
- Falcon
- Rotary Rocket Roton SSTO, VTOL
Were all of them viable? No. Is SSTO a fool’s errand? Yes. Is full recovery necessary for lost costs? No. Was SpaceX the first full recovery of the lower stage(s)? No.
If Shuttle doesn’t count as a reusable vehicle, then neither is Starship. Shuttle actively contributed to launch with its own engines and the external tank.
