Performance loss on recovery, lower industrial rate, cost of refurbishment of the first stage, difficulty convincing customers to use a used launcher, uncertainties about the reliability: it would be a mistake to consider reuse is the alpha and omega of disruptive innovation in the field of launchers. But for the economic equation, things are still very uncertain. It is a beautiful technological achievement in the context of a mission in LEO asking little performance from the launcher, freeing the performance required by recovery. In an interview about the Ariane 6, Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israel said: It was a large investment for them and it required modern technologies that did not exist when most of the current launch vehicles were being designed.Įven today, with SpaceX having partially demonstrated the technology, some of the launch vehicle manufacturers are still not convinced that it would be worthwhile for them to invest their own resources into their upcoming vehicle designs. It took SpaceX 14 years to do the first part. Making a launch vehicle reusable is very difficult. The French and the Russians did, at one time, work together in an attempt to make the Ariane 5 reusable, but the hardware that would be needed to support the return of the vehicle became too large to make the effort worthwhile.
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