/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12065304
>"Hey guys, the X-33 project may have been a failure, but it developed some really nice tiles. We should use these on the STS to cut down on refurbishment time and co-"
>Nah

>>11418654
I really hope that the meme of rockets having to be made from "advanced" materials dies in a fire soon. I'm tired of seeing stuff like.
>Hey, we can make the rocket out of this relatively common alloy. It works and it'll be much chea-
>NOOOOOOO! YOU CANT DO THAT!!! YOU MUST MAKE IT OUT OF THIS BLEEDING EDGE MATERIAL THAT NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO MAKE IT WORK YET OR ELSE WHATS THE POINT!!!!

Memes aside. Are there good counter arguments against the economics of reusable launch vehicles? The only one's I've heard were that the Shuttle tried that and it was too expensive, and that most payloads are so expensive that even a $100M expendable rocket is a small part of the price so there's no motive to go cheaper with reuse. What do you think /sfg/?

pic unrelated

>going to replace the Shuttle
>would use composite tanks for hydrogen
>composite tanks aren't working
>use aluminium tanks
>they're actually lighter and better than composite
>"derp if you don't use composites then the project will be deemed a failure herp"
>no progress is made because composite tanks aren't working right away
>cancelled
>later composites are figured out

I'm thinking that NASA (or whoever was in control of it at the time) didn't want to replace the Shuttle, but it was clear that the Shuttle needed to be replaced. So a mockery of a project was set up to fail so that NASA would have an excuse to keep flying the Shuttle. They picked the most ambitious proposal since it would be the most likely to fail, but then the project was actually making headway. So they had to force the program to fail.