alt Hacker NewsIt's difficult to underline how huge this is. This marks the first time in the history of rocketry that the upper stage of a rocket has returned home from orbit to a safe, upright landing.
(And to preempt the obvious objection: yes, maybe you can call the Space Shuttle an "upper stage of a rocket" if you squint hard enough, but it didn't do upright landings, its external tank was not reusable and even the Shuttle itself was effectively rebuilt from scratch at exorbitant cost each time.)
It's sad to see a lot of media missing the point, eg as I type this BBC is reporting this as "SpaceX successfully catches part of Starship rocket on its return to Earth".
Edit: corrected to note that the SRBs were reusable, but the ET was not.
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> none of its boosters were reusable
The SRBs of the shuttle landed by parachute and were recovered from the water and reused
Don't forget the X37
Whatever you call it, the Shuttle Orbiter wasn’t a complete stage in any case. It needed the external tank, which was never recovered.
SpaceX has now demonstrated all the pieces of a fully reusable launcher. Next comes putting them all together in the same flight, and hopefully demonstrating that the flights can become frequent and cheap. There’s no guarantee of that, but it’s looking good.
> yes, maybe you can call the Space Shuttle an "upper stage of a rocket" if you squint hard enough
Why wouldn't it count? It is not the first time in the history of rocketry that the part that is not the boosters returns home intact.
Sure, you can say "it's the first time in the history of rocketry that it lands upright", but you could also say "it's the first time in the history of rocketry that it is not white".
If you want to say how huge this is, tell me how different it is from landing the boosters. Because from the outside it sure as hell looks very similar.
You know what was huge? James Webb telescope.
Look its cool to see a catch like this, it doesn't necessarly feels that difficult tbh?
And I just don't get it? Is it cool to watch? yes, but whats the endgoal besides reducing costs for starlink and military stuff?
> none of its boosters were reusable
Notably, they were reusable! Sure, they had to refurbish them, same with the shuttle’s main engines. The only thing they threw away was the external tank which didn’t have any engines.