SpaceX's Reusable Rockets: A Short History

Last week, a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster made history by launching to its second orbital mission. On April 8, the booster launched with the company's uncrewed Dragon Capsule to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA.

This made headlines as the said booster was recovered from a previously flown Falcon 9 rocket. With it came the SES-10 communications satellite, which was lifted from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The latest mission made the Falcon 9 rocket to be the second orbit-capable rocket to achieve a partial reusability for the company.

This has especially been important for SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who wanted to make rockets reusable. According to NASA Space Flight, SpaceX previously attempted to recover the first-stage rockets of four Falcon 1 vehicles, but to no avail. The rocket's first launch, for instance, failed early in its mission, and the third launch failed at a separation stage, leaving the first stage unrecoverable. Recovery attempts during the second and fourth launches, on the other hand, proved unsuccessful for the company as well.

Still, to help with SpaceX's reusability objective despite its many initial failures, the company constructed a test vehicle, called the Grasshopper. After several successful low-altitude flights, it was eventually replaced with a new three-engine development vehicle that eventually stretched into becoming the first stage of the Falcon 9 v1.1.

After over a dozen tests, SpaceX launched the 23rd flight of the Falcon 9 rocket on April 8, 2016, which lifted off from the Space Launch Complex 40, to send the Dragon rocket to the ISS. After the first-stage rocket separated and was recovered, the Falcon 9 rocket was set to relaunch following refurbishments and testing.

Space.com noted that SpaceX wanted to launch and land each of the Falcon 9 first-stage rockets many times, with the booster now designed to fly over 10 times with no hardware changes and at least 100 times with moderate refurbishments. Unfortunately, this is not true yet with last week's launch. According to Elon Musk, the newly landed booster's flying days are over. But hopefully, its brothers and sisters could fare much better.