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1355 points LorenDB | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.332s | source
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whatever1 ◴[] No.44300677[source]
Question why is it so easy today to build reusable rockets? Is it because the onboard cpu speed of the chips can solve more granular control problems with low latency?
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1. jessriedel ◴[] No.44301882[source]
The premise of this question is wrong, and it's super disappointing that everyone is giving answers as if it's correct. The Honda test rocket only went to an altitude of 300 meters. It's been possible to propulsively land rockets from such low altitudes for decades, e.g., McDonnell Douglas DC-X test in 1996. (And ofc, if you're just talking about re-use for any landing method, the space shuttle first reused the solid rockets and the orbiter in 1981.)

Reusable, propulsively landed stages for rockets capable of putting payloads into Earth orbit is stupendously harder. The speeds involved are like 10-100x higher than these little hops. The first stages of Falcon 9 and Starship are still the only rockets that have achieved that. Electron has only re-used a single engine.