Reusable orbital rocket (Falcon 9)
Cohete orbital reutilizable (Falcon 9)
- Date
- 2015 · confidence high
- Place
- SpaceX, Hawthorne, California; landing at Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States (21 December 2015)
- Credited to
- SpaceX (Elon Musk, Tom Mueller, Gwynne Shotwell); first reflight in 2017
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The first rocket first stage to return and land vertically for reflight, cutting the cost per kilogram to orbit by an order of magnitude. It changed the economics of access to space.
Blue Origin landed the suborbital New Shepard a month earlier (November 2015); Falcon 9 was the first orbital rocket to do so.
What it led to
- Starlink and megaconstellations
- The commercialisation of space transport and NASA's reliance on private companies
- Starship and plans for the colonisation of Mars