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After 25 years, military told to move from “expendable” to “reusable” rockets (arstechnica.com)
47 points by ryan_j_naughton on July 27, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments



These are space rockets. Reusable munitions would be much more challenging and impressive, though.


I think it would be splitting hairs to start calling reusable rocket munitions anything other than unmanned aerial drone bombers.

Figure you stow such a "rocket" in its launch tube, then, you see a target, lase it (paint/illuminate it with laser guidance target selection) and fire.

The rocket launches, zips over to the target with a first stage, zeros directly over head and ejects the explosive payload onto the target, then the second stage fires, launching it skyward, and it returns to a landing pad with a combination of parachute decent, finished off by a balanced retro-rocket vertical landing on tripod legs.

Hmmm, are the avionics of guided munitions worth such a level of design complexity?


Don’t know just launch all of the current expendable rockets then the only munitions will be using after that would be pretty reusable.


Dear Sr. Taliban Commander,

Can you please return our expended munitions? Enclosed is a FedEx account number.




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