Advantages of Reusable Rocket | Disadvantages of Reusable Rocket

Advantages of Reusable Rocket | disadvantages of Reusable Rocket

This page covers advantages and disadvantages of Reusable Rocket. It mentions Reusable Rocket advantages or benefits and Reusable Rocket disadvantages or drawbacks.

What is Reusable Rocket?

The reusable rocket is the space launch system which allows recovery of its all or partial parts for later reuse. The system can be categorized into fully reusable and partially reusable.

Following are the specifications of Falcon-9 reusable rocket.
• Length: 68 m
• Dry mass: 25 tonnes
• Take-off mass: 506 tonnes
• Payload to LEO: About 13 tonnes
• Vehicle Cost: About £40 million
• Refuel Cost: £130,000
• Reusability: About 10 flights

Figure-1 depicts flight of reusable rocket developed by SpaceX to launch Dragon cargo ship and its return on the Earth back.

Benefits or advantages of Reusable Rocket

Following are the benefits or advantages of Reusable Rocket:
➨Cost for launching becomes much cheaper as it reduces material cost due to reusability.
➨Some of the reusable rockets use kerosene (of rocket grade type) as fuel which do not generate harmful chlorine as exhaust. This helps to protect the environment.
➨We can effectively reuse rockets similar to airplanes, hence space travel will become cheaper to a greater extent.

Drawbacks or disadvantages of Reusable Rocket

Following are the disadvantages of Reusable Rocket:
➨Fuel can not be reused in the rocket as it is released in the atmosphere as exhaust rate of 300 pounds/second.
➨They produce carbon dioxide which pollutes the atmosphere due to emission at stratosphere layer and mesosphere layer.
➨Due to cheaper flight cost, more flights are launched at frequent intervals. This leads to more exhaust and more harm to the atmosphere.

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