It’s increasingly difficult for SpaceX to mark new firsts when it comes to reusability, but they managed Sunday night.
That evening, a Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying Argentina’s SAOCOM 1A radar imaging satellite. As the rocket’s upper stage send the spacecraft into orbit, the first stage returned to Earth—not to a drone ship downrange, but to a landing pad on the former site of Space Launch Complex 4W at Vandenberg, a short distance from SpaceX’s launch site at SLC-4E.
While that launch was the first time a Falcon 9 first stage made a landing back at Vandenberg, the landing was otherwise part of an increasingly routine part of SpaceX’s operations. The company has now landed first stages 30 times, and reflown boosters more than a dozen times, including this launch: the Block 5 first stage that lifted off Sunday first flew in July, carrying a set of Iridium NEXT satellites.
From a technical standpoint, there seems to be little doubt that operational reusability—routinely recovering and reflying boosters—is feasible. But while others announce plans for reusability, like Blue Origin’s New Glenn, not everyone is convinced that reusability is always desirable.
“Reusability is fine from an ecological point of view. From an economic point of view, I don't know,” said Jan Wörner, director general of ESA, in a recent interview. He compared it to the production of water bottles: some are meant to be used over and over, while others are used only once and then recycled. “You even find bottles which are just destroyed,” he said.
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Originally Posted by selvaarchi
