But a great example of the difference between academia and private industry. The shuttle was reusable in theory, but required $1.5B in refurbishment between flights. Refurbishment of the boosters cost more than simply buying new ones would have.
Sure, and the Falcon rocket is not fully reusable, either. It's a lot harder to reuse the second stage, because it's the part that goes to orbit, which means it's moving very fast, and has to lose a lot of energy in order to land softly.
Again, this makes me wonder if the gulf here is academia vs industry, or if it's just 1980 vs 2020.
