“Eighty percent of the cost of the entire rocket at that first stage, in terms of materials and labor,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an interview on Friday.
SpaceX pioneered a new era of reusable rockets and now regularly lands and flies in the early stages of its Falcon 9 rockets over and over again. Falcon 9’s second stages (as well as Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket) are still neglected and often burn up upon re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. SpaceX is designing its next-generation super-rocket, the Starship, to be completely reusable. Competitors such as Blue Origin, the United Launch Alliance and companies in China are developing missiles that can be at least partially reused.
NASA’s Space Shuttles were partially reusable, but they required intensive and expensive labor after each flight and did not deliver on their promises of aircraft-like operations.
For the Falcon 9, the booster rocket is fired multiple times after separating from the second stages, slowing it down on its way to a quiet location, whether on a floating platform in the ocean or on land. The electron is a much smaller rocket, which makes it difficult to reuse.
“You have to spend all your fuel just to get the job done,” Beck said. This ruled out the possibility of landings like Falcon 9’s thrusters.
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