19. What type of rocket will take us to space? (A K2S Question)

From The Space Library

Getting lots of humans into space and back routinely, safely and affordably is a challenging problem. Launch vehicles will need to be designed that are as reliable as an automobile per trip. Cost per flight seems to be driven by flight rate, operations costs, and flight and ground hardware costs. One might envision a fleet of reusable single stage-to-orbit vehicles that land horizontally and are diagnosed, maintained, repaired, and serviced automatically. However, for reusable vehicles to be cost effective they may need to have more than 30 flights per year. Fewer than 15 flights per year of a vehicle type seems to favor expendable launch vehicles, perhaps with a capsule for human recovery.

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Answer provided by John W. Cole

Question and Answer extracted from the book Kids to Space - by Lonnie Schorer

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