SpaceX pulls off return of 1st stage

[robske]

 Watch from 21 minutes if you just want rocketry epicness. But I think this is the best christmas gift those engineers and support people at SpaceX could have gotten

[sscadmin]

Very impressive what SpaceX has done with less money and press coverage. NASA probably could have never done this without billions of dollars and years. Really this is a huge money saver, we can reuse the rockets. But I cannot even imagine the number crunching involved to calculate landing that unmanned rocket. Tip of the hat to those engineers, talk about some very smart individuals.

[robske]

yep. Large part of the launch costs is the engine manufacturing. And cutting out the costs of manufacturing 9 merlin engines does make a quite big difference i think. Of course, it will need maintenance and refurbishment, but as someone posted online. Imagine air travel where every plane had to be rebuilt after the flight. Only the rich would fly. This same analogy can apply to rocketry to some degree.