Re: The first reusable?
'I do agree that the design of the SRBs was suspect - as was shown when one failed. But like much of the early space stuff, it was very much seat of the pants design!'
It really shouldn't have been, they could have bought a single piece SRB from Rocketdyne* made in one of the Gulf of Mexico bordering states and floated around to the Cape. However for political pork barrel reasons they had to go with Morton Thiokol who being based in Utah found it slightly harder to transport the complete rocket as one unit. Consequently they came up with the 'o' ring seal the working of which during launch wasn't even fully understood by its designer.
*I think it was them.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
