Low launch rates don't kill reusability

Credit: ESA/RFA

In March 2017, SpaceX launched a recovered Falcon 9 booster on its second mission for the first time. What followed changed the industry, proving that reuse wasn’t just viable but economically beneficial for a launch services provider. Since that 2017 milestone, European industry leaders have used a near-identical excuse for why Europe wasn’t neck-deep in developing a reusable rocket in the same vein as Falcon 9. The excuse was that Europe just didn’t have the launch frequency needed to make reuse viable.

“Moreover, for overall economic benefits, it is key to launch as many times as possible, to compensate for the loss of manufacturing cadence. So, it may not bring the same advantages in Europe than in the U.S., where you have a huge institutional market with many guaranteed launches to deliver.“
Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël - 2017

“Let's say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe and we had a rocket that could be reused ten times - then we would build exactl…