CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — The successful launch and landing by the first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Monday night marks a huge step forward towards reusable rockets.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk was ecstatic when his Falcon 9 landed intact near its launch pad at Cape Canaveral after launching satellites to space.
The historic flight could lead to a promising future of significantly cheaper launch costs.
In November, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin also landed a rocket, but Musk quickly pointed out their New Shepard rocket only went up really high and came back down — it didn’t orbit.
Reusable rockets would be a game changer because launching cargo into space would be much cheaper with only fuel and maintenance costs to consider. The Falcon 9 costs around $60 million to make. The fuel costs per launch are about $200,000.
“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred,” Musk said on SpaceX’s website.
“The next step is to see how much it costs and how long it takes to refurbish the recovered stage and fly it again,” said Scott Page, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, to NBC News.
Musk’s eventual goal is to send people on a one-way ticket to Mars.
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