| ▲ | cma 14 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> They have the first rocket ever made which can take payloads to orbit and then be reused. The space shuttle did this over 40 years ago. You can argue SpaceX have the first economical one 40 years later, but the second stage isn't reusable. Once they get starship working they might have it. Their finances aren't public but there is some stuff to go on where we can say Falcon is probably economical despite not recovering the second stage. This TED talk from Gwynne Shotwell says they will have reuse of starship so dialed in that in 3 years (from now) they will be competitive with commercial airliners and be operating for consumers in production: https://www.ted.com/talks/gwynne_shotwell_spacex_s_plan_to_f... To be safe enough for that I would have expected thousands of flawless flights by now. They said in 2020 it was still on track for 2028 but the Dear Moon project was canceled since that last update. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | saberience 12 hours ago | parent [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The space shuttle lol? Are you not considering the fact that the huge external tank and the two SRBs were destroyed every time? Not to mention the insane costs of refurbishing each space shuttle, not the mention the insanely bad safety of the shuttle and the 14 astronauts who died in it! Space shuttle, while cool, was really, really bad design, bad safety, and totally uneconomical. It was definitely cooler than Soyuz, but Soyuz was cheaper and more safe. There's a reason the US abandoned space shuttle and had to beg the Russians to use Soyuz to send their astronauts to the space station. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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