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Feasibility of Practical Reusability with Solid Rockets


Silavite

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The STS proved that SRMs can be reused, but the refurbishment required was immense. A big part of this was likely due to the fact that the motors were dropped in seawater, but I find myself wondering if a different landing system would have made practical reusability (in the vein of the Falcon 9 first stage) possible. Even assuming that SRMs are able to magically soft land near the launch site, the refueling process involves recasting and installing multiple segments of solid rocket fuel. Even handwaving the issue of landing (say that a winged flyback system with horizontal landing is used) and inspection, the refueling process sounds insurmountably labor intensive.

Could practical reusability (on the level of the Falcon 9 first stage, which pushes costs down significantly but isn't a paradigm changer) or rapid reusability (on the level of Starship's aspirations with almost no inspection) be achieved with solids? If so, how?

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