Shuttle Program Proved That Reusing Spacecraft Is Not As Easy As It Sounds

By Wes Oleszewski, ANN Spaceflight Analyst

On the evening of December 21, 2015 a SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage was successfully landed on Cape Canaveral after boosting its second stage into orbit to deploy satellites. The entire mission was viewed as a huge comeback in the SpaceX effort to return to flight following the loss of a launch vehicle last summer and two previous failures to accomplish the landing of a powered booster on a barge at sea.

This is an amazingly super event... but, it is not over. In order to fully demonstrate the concept that boosters can be returned from a launch and be reused safely and cost effectively the SpaceX folks now have to do the other hard part... they have to do it again.

That is right, they need to safely launch a booster that they have recovered, plus make it cost less than expending the booster. If this booster that was just successfully power-landed on Cape Canaveral should now simply be made into a display at SpaceX headquarters as Elon has reportedly suggested, it would have only served to have demonstrated half of what SpaceX wants to prove.

Just like the first two Space Shuttles STS-1 and STS-2, there would have been no reuse-ability if they had not reused the hardware successfully. In the opening days of the Space Shuttle program, NASA had boasted that the Shuttles would be reusable to the point where they would bring down the cost so far that the missions would actually make money. Additionally their reusability would lend to faster turn-around times for each orbiter due to less maintenance man-hours. Plus the entire fleet could be flown in that mode with each orbiter doing 100 flights in its life-span. Of course none of that turned out to be true and even though the orbiters did demonstrate that they could be reused, the cost of that reuse-ability turned out to be far greater than that of expendable boosters, The question now is, will SpaceX also come up against the myth of spacecraft reuse-ability?

I am not telling you anything that the management and engineers at SpaceX do not already know. While their employees in their California control center celebrate in a grossly unprofessional manner, the fact is that perhaps the bigger challenge for the Falcon 9 still remains to be met by the company’s engineers. Making this historic boost and landing was NOT easy, and making the next one may be just as difficult or perhaps even more difficult.

Also, for the SpaceX hard core critics reading this, keep in mind that once SpaceX starts actually flying pre-flown boosters they will be flight testing in an almost new area of operational flight and failures should be expected. Frankly, pushing into that area is what I will find to be really interesting. I will be glued to the next launch and landing of a once-flown booster. That is the way of spaceflight- once you've done it, it gets harder.

(Image from file)

FMI: www.spacex.com