Recovery of the first stage of SpaceX rockets is not even close to being the same thing as reuse of the shuttle. Surviving re-entry is a completely different set of specs than floating through atmosphere at a much much slower rate of descent.

I mean from a technological point of view sure, but that just shows how bad the design was(compared to what we know now). The falcon program shows that it’s obviously way more economical to just ditch the 2nd stage and reuse the booster. F9 launches cost sub 20 million and a shuttle launch costs on the order of a billion. Squabble over whatever details you want about performance or who had to do what R&D but F9 is clearly in a different league.

> Squabble over whatever details you want about performance or who had to do what R&D but F9 is clearly in a different league.

Falcon 9 First launch attempt 2007 [0]

Shuttle First launch 1981 [1]

I wonder if there's an advantage to having 26 years of watching someone else before designing yours? You also act like the rockets from the shuttle were not reused. They always (except for 2 instances) came back with the shuttle. The SRBs were also recovered, so it's not like these were wasted.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle

I’m not disputing SpaceX had the advantage of learning from peoples mistakes. And I’m not arguing that they didn’t physically get the engines and boosters back I’m just saying that calling the space shuttle and F9 both reusable may be semantically true but is really not giving an accurate representation.

SpaceX is also contributing to the increasing amounts of space junk. How long is the second stage just floating around after delivering payloads? Once the shuttle delivered payloads, it just left nothing but space.

Almost Immediately after the payload is deployed, the second stage does a deorbit burn. So maybe an hour? Each Shuttle launch ended with ditching the enormous external tank into like the Indian Ocean, far more dry mass in the atmosphere/ocean than a Falcon 9 upper stage. (Also, the ET was about $100-150 million apiece.)

I was not aware of the second stage doing a de-orbit burn. TIL

> Once the shuttle delivered payloads, it just left nothing but space

The Shuttle unintentionally shed all sorts of nonsense during flight.

Lol are you just making stuff up now? The second stage re enters the atmosphere and burns up.

No, it was a legit question. It depends on the payload though right? For StarLink deployments at LEO, I'm sure it re-enters soon-ish. But what about for higher altitude launches of other types of satellites? How long does the second stage float around?

If you have questions I'd suggest asking them as a question. Your post read as a statement of fact with a rhetorical question attached.

"How long is the second stage just floating around after delivering payloads?"

How much more of a interrogative statement does it need to be made to be considered asking a non-rhetorical question?

If you take it out of context of your post, yes, it looks like a well posed question. When read in context it looks rhetorical and that's how I took it, too. Perhaps you didn't intend that. But that is how it came out.

As a standalone question that's fine, but in context it's a rhetorical question as you already state your assumed answer.

A brief look would have you find that for most (but not all) launches the second stage de-orbits after one or two orbits and isn't even left in orbit for a day. (For some launches it's impossible to de-orbit the stage and no matter which provider you launch with will leave a second stage as junk in orbit.)

Also, this isn't just SpaceX, every launching country/company leaves second stages in orbit, some, unlike SpaceX, don't even try to dispose of their second stages and leave all second stages in orbit.

I'd recommend reading up more on the topic as I think you read something at some point and think that SpaceX is an especially bad actor in the space when in fact they are one of the most responsible actors, if not _the_ most responsible actor, in the space launch sector at the moment.

SpaceX is launching stuff at an incredible rate. That's the great thing, but it also means that as they continue to launch, the amount of 2nd stages left behind will only increase.

I didn't read anything one time in weird corner of the internet like seem to want to insinuate. There are plenty of sites where you can see the items being tracked. There is a large number of second stages in orbit that are not coming back any time soon. It might have been some coincidental bit of luck that on one particular perusal of one of these sites I just happened to click on 2 such items. Again, as they continue to increase the rate of launches, this will become an issue. And obviously, I don't believe SpaceX is the only such party doing this. That's just an unintelligent comment to have made.

> SpaceX is launching stuff at an incredible rate. That's the great thing, but it also means that as they continue to launch, the amount of 2nd stages left behind will only increase.

You seem to be saying that all entities globally should as a whole launch less objects into space, as you imply that putting more objects into space is a net negative. That's fine to think but I strongly disagree that we as a planet should launch less objects into space.

> There is a large number of second stages in orbit that are not coming back any time soon.

I agree, which is why we should push for regulations that require satellite operators to have plans to de-orbit their satellites at end of life and/or not launch to orbits where the launching stage cannot quickly de-orbit within a set number of years. However simply pushing for all countries to launch less things into space, as you seem to be saying, is not a good idea.

They also lugged a large amount of extra dry mass into space because of the mass of the orbiter. The part that was least important to re-use and most expensive to re-use is the part that was re-used the most.

maybe, but it was the coolest part to re-use. whatever inefficiencies the shuttle had that people squabble over, it was a very inspiring program. not sure how much inspiration to a small kid a SpaceX launch is, but i know exactly how much the shuttle was.

>not sure how much inspiration to a small kid a SpaceX launch is, but i know exactly how much the shuttle was.

From what I've seen, it sounds like many kids these days feel the same way about SpaceX launches now as you did about the shuttle (incredibly inspiring). I hope that's reassuring.

it is. i know that i flew my shuttle around my room much more than my apollo rockets. my fighter jets had a hard time keeping up with the shuttle in my room too. i once saw footage of the "chase" planes as the shuttle screamed past them on approach. just so much more "cool" to the shuttle than a capsule.

This video showing kids’ reaction to the Falcon Heavy inaugural launch is pretty fun. The dual-landing is absolutely insane. Straight up science fiction. https://youtu.be/A0FZIwabctw

What do kids have to do with anything? The goal is to get to space affordably and reliably; the shuttle failed on both fronts SpaceX is succeeding at.

>What do kids have to do with anything?

What do kids ever have to do with anything? They are the next generation that may or may not want to be involved in whatever they might be getting inspired by.

>The goal is to get to space affordably and reliably; the shuttle failed on both fronts SpaceX is succeeding at.

Shuttle had ~135 missions (number from memory) with 1 failure at launch. The second failure was at re-entry, so assumption is that the mission deployed whatever was being deployed (if that was part of the mission). How many missions has SpaceX lost payloads on? >1? If we do percentages, sure, but to say that 1 failure at launch is unreliable is just farcical.

The space shuttle killed 14 people because it was a poorly-built, designed-by-committee piece of garbage.

Are you actually trying to say the mission when Columbia came apart on re entry and killed 7 people was successful? And you’re gonna say the challenger mission failure that killed people is the same as SpaceX losing a satellite and a dragon cargo capsule.

That’s one of the worst takes I’ve ever heard

Rockets landing vertically is the most sci-fi thing ever and has been a staple of science fiction since the early 20th century. I think that's plenty more cool than landing it horizontally.

Anyway, coolness factor doesn't really matter for space. Economical things also tend to end up looking cool over time anyway simply because streamlined designs which are efficient tend to also look cool..

Daddy, when I grow up, I want to grab massive government subsidies and attack trans-people, just like Elon…

> inefficiencies the shuttle had that people squabble over, it was a very inspiring program

Exactly. The shuttle program was designed by bureaucrats to be "inspiring." Which explains why it was such a dismal failure economically and in turns of safety - killing 14 people which is far more than any other rocket, and costing insanely more than expendables.

The shuttle program set the U.S. space program back by decades. We are only now finally starting to recover from its dismal failure.

It wasn't designed to be inspiring. That is nonsense. Non of the designers involved would ever claim that's what they did.

It was designed in an environment they couldn't iterate and test, and tried to go from very little knowlage directly to a massively complex system.

And no only that, they were very limited in terms of funding, so anything that required to much development had to be kicked.

The first stage of SpaceX is the most expensive part with nine engines. The second stage is just single engine. Plus SpaceX reuse fairings and the Dragon is also reusable. So re-usable parts are like 95% and expendable parts are vastly cheaper than Shuttle refurbishing.