Why SpaceX Rocket Landing Is a Giant Leap for Space Travel

SpaceX successfully landed its powerful Falcon 9 rocket in an upright position at Cape Canaveral, an historic first in the company’s bid to make reusable rockets.

“Welcome back, baby!” Musk tweeted after the 15-story rocket touched down at a landing site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, 10 minutes after launching from another point six miles north. It was also the first time a rocket successfully launched a payload into space and returned to Earth intact. About two minutes into the flight, the rocket’s first-stage separated cleanly from the second stage and began a controlled descent back to Earth. With the landing of Falcon 9, SpaceX got an edge on its competitor, Blue Origin, which brought back its own rocket (which did not carry cargo) last month.

Ironically enough, SpaceX founder Elon Musk noted that the Falcon 9 that landed on Monday night will never actually be reused on another mission. From Elon Musk’s twitter page. Secondly, on reentering the first stage through Earth’s atmosphere and conducting precision landings on an autonomous spaceport drone ship at sea, and then eventually it lands. The company has tried twice before to land a rocket, without success (see “SpaceX Claims Partial Success with Rocket Crash Landing”).

“It’s a revolutionary moment”, Musk told reporters after the landing. Its main goal was to blast OrbComm’s satellites to orbit and show the world that it recovered from the June 28 disaster, which cost NASA and taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

If you want to watch the whole thing, (skip to about 22:50 for the launch, and the landing comes around 32:25) you can take a look below. “The Falcon has landed”, a launch commentator said during SpaceX’s webcast, followed by chants of “U.S.A.!”

“Lower launch costs mean more space-related endeavors, more startups, more space tourism, more space businesses”, he said.

Musk had not responded to Bezos at the time of publication.