Reusable launch vehicle

A reusable launch vehicle have parts that can be recovered and reflown, while carrying payloads from the surface to outer space. Rocket stages are the most common launch vehicle parts aimed for reuse. Smaller parts such as rocket engines and boosters can also be reused, though reusable spacecraft may be launched on top of an expendable launch vehicle. Reusable launch vehicles do not need to make these parts for each launch, therefore reducing its launch cost significantly. However, these benefits are diminished by the cost of recovery and refurbishment.

Reusable launch vehicles may contain additional avionics and propellant, making them heavier than their expendable counterparts. Reused parts may need to enter the atmosphere and navigate through it, so they are often equipped with heat shields, grid fins, and other flight control surfaces. By modifying their shape, spaceplanes can leverage aviation mechanics to aid in its recovery, such as gliding or lift. In the atmosphere, parachutes or retrorockets may also be needed to slow down it further. 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. In the 1960s and 1970s, the first reusable launch vehicles were manufactured, named the Space Shuttle and Energia. However, in the 1990s, due to both programs' failure to meet expectations, reusable launch vehicle concepts were reduced to prototype testing. The rise of private spaceflight companies in the 2000s and 2010s lead to a resurgence of their development, such as in SpaceShipOne, New Shepard, Electron, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. Many launch vehicles are now expected to debut with reusability in the 2020s, such as Starship, New Glenn, Amur, Ariane Next, Long March rockets, and the Dawn Mk-II Aurora.

Configurations

Reusable launch systems may be either fully- or partially-reusable.

Fully-reusable launch vehicle

, fully-reusable orbital systems have yet to be built and made operational. Fully-reusable launch vehicles could theoretically be single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicles, as well as multi-stage-to orbit systems.

Three companies are currently in development to achieve fully-reusable launch vehicles as of July 2021. Each of them is working on a two-stage-to-orbit system. SpaceX, with their SpaceX Starship, has been in development since 2016 and is aiming to make an initial test flight of a part of the system capabilities as early as 2022. Relativity Space, with their Terran R beginning development by 2021, is aiming to make an initial orbital launch test by 2024. Blue Origin, with Project Jarvis, began development work by early 2021, but has announced no date for testing, nor even been public with their plans.

Earlier plans to run tests of enhanced reusability on the second stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 were set aside in 2018.

Partially-reusable launch systems

Partial reusable launch systems, in the form of multiple stage to orbit systems have been so far the only reusable configurations in use.

Liftoff stages

Existing reusable launch systems use rocket-propelled vertical liftoff.

Other than that a range of non-rocket liftoff systems have been proposed and explored over time as reusable systems for liftoff, from balloons to space elevators. Existing examples are systems which employ winged horizontal jet-engine powered liftoff. Such aircraft can air launch expendable rockets and can because of that be considered partially reusable systems if the aircraft is thought of as the first stage of the launch vehicle. An example of this configuration is the Orbital Sciences Pegasus. For suborbital flight the SpaceShipTwo uses for liftoff a carrier plane, its mothership the Scaled Composites White Knight Two.

Orbital insertion stages

So far, launch systems achieve orbital insertion with multistaged rockets, particularly with the second and third stages. Only the Space Shuttle has achieved a partial reuse of the orbital insertion stage, by using the engines of its orbiter.

Reusable orbiter

Launch systems can be combined with reusable orbiters. The Space Shuttle orbiter, SpaceShipTwo, Dawn Mk-II Aurora, and the under-development Indian RLV-TD are examples for a reusable space vehicle (a spaceplane) as well as a part of its launch system.

More contemporarily the Falcon 9 launch system has carried reusable vehicles such as the Dragon 2 and X-37, transporting two reusable vehicles at the same time.

Contemporary reusable orbital vehicles include the X-37, the Dream Chaser, the Dragon 2, the Indian RLV-TD and the upcoming European Space Rider (successor to the IXV).

As with launch vehicles, all pure spacecraft during the early decades of human capacity to achieve spaceflight were designed to be single-use items. This was true both for satellites and space probes intended to be left in space for a long time, as well as any object designed to return to Earth such as human-carrying space capsules or the sample return canisters of space matter collection missions like Stardust (1999–2006) or Hayabusa (2005–2010). Exceptions to the general rule for space vehicles were the US Gemini SC-2, the Soviet Union spacecraft Vozvraschaemyi Apparat (VA), the US Space Shuttle orbiter (mid-1970s-2011, with 135 flights between 1981 and 2011) and the Soviet Buran (1980-1988, with just one uncrewed test flight in 1988). Both of these spaceships were also an integral part of the launch system (providing launch acceleration) as well as operating as medium-duration spaceships in space. This began to change in the mid-2010s.

In the 2010s, the space transport cargo capsule from one of the suppliers resupplying the International Space Station was designed for reuse, and after 2017, NASA began to allow the reuse of the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft on these NASA-contracted transport routes. This was the beginning of design and operation of a reusable space vehicle.

Since then also the Boeing Starliner

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