Space shuttle was a reliable recovery vehicle too.

I see a need for maintenance crews and large payload recovery in the future.

Starship doesn't seem like the tool for that, and no tool is in development for it TMK?

nickff 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Recovery never paid dividends for Shuttle, due to satellites' degradation in orbit, and SPCX seems to have driven the industry even further from 'exquisite systems'. I love the idea of in-orbit servicing, but I am not sure it will ever work for unmanned objects.

	▲	Rapzid 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The economics and use cases have and are evolving. I don't see this as "space shuttle done right" as a vehicle or "program" without the ability to carry out maintenance and recovery missions. As expensive as it was, for various reasons, it was actually used for those missions. For example I don't think "space data centers" are going to work if the upgrade path for the hardware is vaporize it all and replace it vs recover and recycle/resell.

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pigpop 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Once you get mass into orbit it's more economical to keep it there so rather than recovery to Earth it would be better to build the facilities in orbit to perform maintenance, refurbishment and refuelling. Starship should make that feasible.

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colechristensen an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

no reason you couldn't make a starship with a cargo bay for recovery, it would just cost a considerable amount of payload mass

	▲	31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
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