Elon Musk: “No one has ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield.”

“You've got to have a means of bringing the rocket back to the launch pad. You've got to have a fully reusable orbital heat shield, and that No one has ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield. The Space shuttle, for example, required nine months of refurbishment between flights. So the Space shuttle heat shield would come back essentially partially broken and would require many months of refurbishment in order to fly again.” (09:29–09:33)

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.