[−]burnerRhodov3 · 2026-11-15 Sun 16:41 UTC ·
link
exactly! They've demonstrated all of those problems already in both the falcon 9 and falcon heavy. They are planning 5+ variants of starship as i'm aware.
The reason the shuttle was so expensive and costly was because they used ablative cooling. SpaceX came up with some novel material produced entirely in house to make the heat shield hot swappable. They new this was a problem from the start and specifically designed this thing to be rapidly reusable, not just reusable in namesake.
Atleast, on elon time it's super easy to get these haters to eat their words. They are producing one of these every month, so he will see how fast they scale from here. Even if it takes a month to referb and put back on the pad, they are scaling exponetially pretty fast.
Shuttle didn't use ablative heatshields. They had to check - that is, detach, disassemble etc. - engines, which added to delays and costs.
[−]burnerRhodov3 · 2026-11-15 Sun 17:47 UTC ·
link
They used ablative materials at multiple spots on the shuttle, mainly in the a elevon gaps and around the nose. They also used carbon on carbon on all the wing edges, which is super expensive, but lasts a long time in theory but you have to scrap the whole section if it cracks.
The reason the shuttle was so expensive and costly was because they used ablative cooling. SpaceX came up with some novel material produced entirely in house to make the heat shield hot swappable. They new this was a problem from the start and specifically designed this thing to be rapidly reusable, not just reusable in namesake.
Atleast, on elon time it's super easy to get these haters to eat their words. They are producing one of these every month, so he will see how fast they scale from here. Even if it takes a month to referb and put back on the pad, they are scaling exponetially pretty fast.
Even if they have to do that every flight, which I doubt, SpaceX can achieve a very high flight rate with relatively few Ships.