Reusable spacecraft
Reusable spacecraft are designed to have components that can be recovered, refurbished, and utilized for multiple missions. The concept gained prominence during the Space Shuttle program, which began in 1981 and demonstrated the potential of reusability despite facing engineering challenges and tragic incidents. While historically limited to a few systems, interest in reusable spacecraft surged in the 21st century, spurred by advancements from private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. These organizations have developed innovative designs that utilize lightweight materials, significantly reducing launch costs and enhancing sustainability.
Key examples of modern reusable spacecraft include SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Blue Origin's New Shepard, both of which have successfully completed missions and returned to Earth. The drive towards reusability is also linked to the burgeoning field of space tourism, with predictions that costs may decrease, making it more accessible in the coming decades. As the industry evolves, future projects, such as SpaceX's Starship, are being designed for rapid reusability and have ambitious goals for lunar and Martian exploration. Overall, reusable spacecraft represent a critical shift in space exploration, promising greater affordability and environmental sustainability while expanding human presence beyond Earth.
Reusable spacecraft
Reusable spacecraft are spacecraft with one or more sections that can be recovered, refurbished, and reused in future spaceflights. They have been used in spaceflight since the Space Shuttle era, with the first successful deployment of the reusable Space Shuttle taking place in 1981. However, reusable spacecraft comprise only a small percentage of the rocket systems used in modern space exploration, mainly because engineering a spacecraft to be reusable adds inert mass that compromises the optimization of its performance characteristics.
Despite their relatively small presence in the contemporary generation of space vehicles, the concept of reusability has enjoyed a resurgence in twenty-first-century spacecraft design and deployment strategies. Reusable spacecraft regained the attention of both spaceflight engineers and the general public following the successful deployment of the Falcon system by SpaceX, a private spacecraft design and manufacturing company founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2002.
Brief History
Engineers have worked to develop spacecraft with reusable components since the Space Race, which was as intense technological rivalry between the Cold War (1947–1991) adversaries of the United States and the Soviet Union. The Space Race is often said to have begun in 1957 with the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik 1 spacecraft, which marked the first successful deployment of an artificial satellite into low-Earth orbit in history. The date of the Space Race’s conclusion is usually given as July 17, 1975, around which time the United States and Soviet Union moved beyond rivalry to cooperation when crewed spacecraft from both countries met and docked in orbit.
Though no reusable spacecraft were deployed by either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Space Race, the era brought the origins of the technological experimentation that allowed their later development. The Space Shuttle, developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was the first operational spacecraft in history to feature reusable components and systems. Its first mission, STS-1, launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 12, 1981. The Space Shuttle was retired in July 2011 following the STS-135 mission.
The reusability of the Space Shuttle made it centrally important to the construction of the International Space Station (ISS). Construction of the ISS began in 1998 and began continuously hosting human crew in 2000. However, the Space Shuttle was also involved in two major tragedies during its operational history: the Challenger disaster of 1986 and the Columbia disaster of 2003. The two events combined to claim the lives of fourteen astronauts.
During its period of active service and at the time of its retirement, the Space Shuttle was the world’s only major reusable spacecraft. While spacecraft reusability was generally considered desirable from a theoretical perspective, it posed engineering challenges. The materials science and engineering technologies needed to build reusable spacecraft existed well before the Space Shuttle era, but were not widely used. This was mainly due to their negative impacts on mass-ratio efficiency. Spacecraft with higher mass ratios require more propellant, which adds what is known in aerospace engineering as inert mass.
As the 2010s progressed, aerospace technologists and engineers became increasingly aware of the need to create systems with reusable or recyclable components. This was partially borne from greater sensitivity to the ecological impacts of spaceflight, but it also became a matter of practical necessity as private companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic became increasingly active. While reusable spacecraft generally result in performance trade-offs, they also offer cost efficiency advantages that appeal to private companies seeking ways to monetize space tourism and other off-world operations.
In December 2015, Blue Origin successfully landed its reusable New Shepard rocket booster following a suborbital test flight while SpaceX returned its reusable Falcon 9 rocket to Earth following an orbital flight. The feats marked major breakthroughs for privatized reusable spacecraft technology, with the SpaceX achievement representing the first time in history that a reusable rocket successfully landed back on Earth following an orbital deployment.
Overview
The twenty-first-century resurgence of interest in reusable spacecraft technology has mainly been driven by rapid advancements in privatized space exploration and space travel. While most of the Space Shuttle’s components were reusable, certain systems—including its external fuel tank—were lost during its missions. Engineers and materials scientists have begun to focus on creating fully reusable systems that optimize performance efficiency and adhere to the high sustainability standards that observers believe will be a major priority for clients as space tourism becomes increasingly accessible.
Emerging generations of reusable spacecraft technology increasingly rely on advanced, lightweight materials and alloys that maintain the necessary performance characteristics. SpaceX and other operators and space agencies have created innovative spacecraft designs that place sturdy but lightweight materials at strategically important points. Examples of these materials include alloys made from base metals including aluminum, magnesium, and titanium, as well as Kevlar, a synthetic fiber with excellent heat-resistance properties. Many of these materials are treated with special protective coatings that reflect thermal and ultraviolet radiation, making them better able to withstand the stresses of launch, reentry, and the unforgiving conditions beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
By adopting lightweight strategies, private space companies have managed to dramatically reduce launch costs. NASA’s Space Shuttle carried launch costs estimated at approximately $54,500 per kilogram. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy spacecraft, which was first launched in 2018, carried a launch cost reported by SpaceX at $1,410 per kilogram. Coupled with spacecraft reusability, these launch cost improvements have generally functioned to dramatically improve the financial feasibility of private ventures involving space tourism and space exploration.
The reusable spacecraft active as of the mid-2020s included spaceplanes, rockets, orbit services, and suborbital vehicles. Examples include Blue Origin’s New Shepard, SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip 2 spaceplane. In November 2024, SpaceX planned to launch its super-heavy vehicle, Starship. The Starship vehicle was designed not only to be completely reusable but also to be prepared for reuse within an atypically compact timeframe. SpaceX planned to use Starship to transport cargo and human personnel to nearby celestial objects, such as the Moon and Mars, with Musk characterizing the system’s reusability as a critically important feature for facilitating its future use in Martian colonization.
Excitement around SpaceX’s Starship developments followed a series of classified tests reportedly carried out by China in 2022. In August 2022, China tested a reusable spacecraft from a launch site in the Gobi Desert. Chinese officials indicated the craft was successful in reaching low-Earth orbit, but otherwise said little about the event. The test came approximately two years after China carried out similarly secretive tests on another reusable spacecraft. Observers speculated that both the 2020 and 2022 tests involved spaceplanes, which are advanced vehicles that function like conventional airplanes while inside the Earth’s atmosphere and function like spacecraft upon exiting it.
A December 2021 article published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Acta Astronautica credited SpaceX’s success with the Falcon 9 rocket and other systems as a major catalyst for the resurgence of interest in reusable spacecraft technologies. In addition to delivering significant cost advantages, the article also highlighted a superior ability to avoid fallout as an additional benefit of reusable spacecraft. In space aeronautics, fallout describes the terrestrial or marine contamination that can occur when disintegrated spacecraft components return to the Earth’s surface level following atmospheric reentry.
Observers note that space tourism is poised to experience rapid growth in the 2020s and 2030s as reusable spacecraft technologies continue to advance. As of 2023, space tourism remains highly cost-prohibitive, with Reader’s Digest reporting fares beginning at $50,000 per seat and rising as high as $450,000 per passenger in 2023. A 2022 article published by Singapore Management University predicted that leisure space travel costs will fall dramatically in the near-term future, making space tourism more affordable by the late 2030s or early 2040s.
Bibliography
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