DOWN WITH REUSE!

The holy grail of rocketry has, for a long time, been a single step 
rocket, able to reach orbit and return to the ground in a fit state to be 
launched again.  Although an admirable aim, the persuit of this goal does 
more harm than good.  Without the application of atomic power, the cargo 
capacity of such vessels is just too small.

It is not far from the truth to say that mass in orbit is worth its weight 
in gold, given the current state of the art.  It is senseless to take any 
mass into orbit which does not stay there, with the obvious exception of 
the apperatus necessary to return personell, scientific samples and the 
like to the ground.

With this in mind, the concept of carrying heatshields, parachutes, etc. 
into orbit for the express purpose of returning empty fuel tanks to the 
ground is frankly ludicrous, never mind the carrying of kitchen sinks!

The situation with valuables (people, comsats) is bad enough, but when it 
comes to bulk cargo (propellants, water, food, clothes), the use of 
anything short of the absolute cheapest rocket is indefensible.  It 
matters not one whit if the whole lot ends up at the bottom of the sea.  
It is cheaper to accept the loss and launch another than to attempt to 
reduce failure rates to zero (an impossible task anyway).  The American 
space shuttle ("STS") is farcicaly expensive to run because of the 
"mustn't fail" philosophy (and the "what goes up must come down" idiocy).

The idea of a single step rocket does, however, remain valid.  The 
resultant simplicity of operations has much to recomend it (no chasing 
after boosters or first steps, no staging to worry about, fewer 
components to check before flight, etc.).

However, once the carrier rocket reaches orbit, it should be considered 
not as a vessel to be returned to its home port, but as a valuable source 
of materials.  Broken for parts, the large tanks can become living 
quarters, hangars & storage vessels.  A tank cut in half longways 
might make a solar furnace or provide a convienient shadow for carrying 
out spacewalks out of the sun's glare.  The rocket's engine could be given 
an overhaull and go on to serve in a lunar or planetery expedition, be 
dismantled for parts or even just be mothballed against future need.  
Anything which cannot be reused could be retained as radiation shielding.  
Refractories from combustion chambers might even end up being melted down 
to manufacture heatshields for returning samples to the ground!

None of the mass comes back down, therefore all of the mass is, after a 
fassion, cargo.  Further, no cargo capacity is squandered on carrying 
recovery equipment up, only to bring it down again.  One other advantage 
of this approach is that there is no need for dirtside recovery crews (a 
collossal expense), since there is nothing to recover.

The principal can be extended for almost any flight to any destination.  
If a rocket is to carry a cargo from Tellurian to Lunar orbit, then, once 
it has delivered its cargo, there is nothing to say that it must be 
brought back.  Although ferries will eventualy make the reverse journey 
laden with lunar fuel and materials, in the early days, the flow of cargo 
will be predominantly one way.  The rockets which carry these initial 
cargos could provide materials for the construction of a space station in 
lunar orbit or at one (or more!) of the Lagrange points.

Simmilarly, the first lunar base should be predominantly built of spent 
tanks from cargo landers.  Its chemical plants could incorperate 
turbopumps from the same rockets and the smelters could be made from 
beaten down combustion chambers.

Martian exploration could use the same techniques.  Indeed, as flight 
durations and distance from home rise, the psycological benifits of having 
large habitable volumes may well prove more of an argument for recycling 
rockets than mass considerations.

  - Alistair McLaren, Oct 2003