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Five orbiters would launch 135 times before the vehicle's retirement in 2011. Space Shuttle Discovery set the record of 39 spaceflights with a single spacecraft in 2011. [6] The Space Shuttle program, however, faced criticism that it failed to reduce the cost of access to space and had safety concerns following the Challenger and Columbia ...
Reusable parts may also need specialized recovery facilities such as runways or autonomous spaceport drone ships. Some concepts rely on ground infrastructures such as mass drivers to accelerate the launch vehicle beforehand. Since at least in the early 20th century, single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicles have existed in science fiction.
Reusable launch systems are currently being developed by private industry. Early spacecraft or space vehicles were sometimes known as " spaceships ", [ 2 ] [ 3 ] a term which comes from science fiction to designate a hypothetical vehicle which travels beyond low Earth orbit and is 100% reusable, needing only to be refueled like an airplane.
The report also created three classes of a future reusable shuttle: Class I would have a reusable orbiter mounted on expendable boosters, Class II would use multiple expendable rocket engines and a single propellant tank (stage-and-a-half), and Class III would have both a reusable orbiter and a reusable booster.
As of 2024, the company is also developing the fully reusable Starship launch system, which will replace Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon. [ 1 ] SpaceX's first launch vehicle, the Falcon 1 , was the first privately developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to be launched into orbit, and used SpaceX's Merlin and Kestrel engines for its first and ...
Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle was the first crewed spacecraft to land on the Moon (July 20, 1969).. This is a list of all crewed spacecraft types that have flown into space, including sub-orbital flights above 80 km, space stations that have been visited by at least one crew, and spacecraft currently planned to operate with crews in the future. [1]
SpaceX, which aims to dramatically lower space transportation costs, designed Dragon 2 to be reused, not discarded as is typical of spacecraft. It is composed of a reusable capsule and a disposable trunk. SpaceX and NASA initially certified the capsule to be used for five missions.
Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development, as a proposed nuclear shuttle in the plan was cancelled in 1972. [1] [2] It flew 135 missions and carried 355 astronauts from 16 countries, many on multiple trips.