| ▲ | nickff 23 minutes ago | |
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 15 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. | ||