/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11938864
I mean I'll play devil's advocate and just say that Raptor was designed from the ground up to be highly reusable. This was easy(ish) because there has been decades of research on bell engines. Not much research has been done on aerospikes like, at all. I mean Elon could do it sure. But it would have to be way down the line (and there would need to be a reason, such as: complete homogeneity like you said, or finding out that aerospikes are way more reliant than bell engines which idk if they are)

>>11809103
>>11809109
It is certainly more expensive, but with Elon's memeship becoming more and more of a reality each day I think we are approaching a future where human spaceflight will be just a cheap as launching a rover (Besides logistics like food, supplies, living habitats, etc. This intrinsically adds costs but Elon wants to do it so I think he will be funding all these launches with money from Starlink and stuff...)

Someone tell me how the fuck this is, in ANY way, similar to Shuttle. It's not a spaceplane.