Skylon/SABRE intercooler actually cool!

Thanks for the explanation of the mousetrap, I guess we all learn new stuff every day

As far as I remember, Elon Musk talked about launching at least the first stage multiple times a day, that would hint a solution that does not require a complete tear down, but perhaps that is further into the future than I thought, but we got to remember that the Skylon is not right around the corner either.

Perhaps you are right about the bringing stuff down value with Planetary Resources coming up, and perhaps even moon mining.

But I'm still to pessimistic to start celebrating anything before the hardware is a lot closer to completion. The Skylon have been underway for more than 20 years, and who knows how long time is left before it takes off (if ever).

Anyway, SpaceX is flying their rockets already, and who knows what kind of improvements they can make to them before the Skylon is ready.

That is true. Flying real hardware today trumps all the grandiose plans of everyone else.

Thanks as well for the explanation, I'd see it before and knew what it meant, but not that it was coined by Emerson.

If I understand correctly, a good part of the reason for the Shuttle SRBs needing overhaul is that they end up crashing into the ocean. If your stages can instead do a nice soft touchdown in a nice clean parking lot, a lot less overhaul may be necessary. And IIRC the heat shield on Dragon is supposed to be reusable for quite a few LEO re-entries, although maybe they don't do it that way yet. It's anybody's guess how much room there really is in the current SpaceX architecture for full reusability, but Musk is a scary smart guy and so far he has been doing very well as product architect. If he says he can do it...well it may take a bit longer than planned, but ultimately I believe he'll get there.

Actually the shuttles main engines were removed after each flight and refitted, fixed or thrown away. Usually the engines from another ship that had already been servicved were put in placed of the just used ones and those would be serviced and ready fo the next shuttle.