/sci/ - Science & Math

I just don't understand this reusable test stand meme.

The amount of money you can save from reusing test stands isn’t enough to justify how much harder it makes it to perform the difficult burns at usually make money in the testing world. I’m sure one day reusability will be more effective, but the truth is that when you have all the challenges that come with structural science in general, it’s almost always much more effective to throw away the stand after it’s done its job than to figure out how to make recovery part of the mission. I know of no major technology on the near term horizon that would change that.

Even if reusable test stands are possible now, but when reliability is THE number one priority (in this case the core stage takes up 2/3rds of the cost and the actual stand only 1/3rd) it makes absolutely no sense. Like, look at this test stand (pic related). This represents some of the most advanced technologies in the aerospace world. Do you honestly think that such a complicated machine can be made tough and reliable enough to be reusable? I doubt it. Best example in my opinion is condoms, sure you could reuse them but making sure that they do not suffer a drop in reliability will cost a lot of money and time.

Just because some country made reusing test stand popular, then that doesn't mean that we will have the sci-fi future of millions of rocket engine burns per year. We'll be lucky to see more than a couple dozen per year. Dial down your expectations, don't buy into the 'reusability for test stands' meme.