How Reusable Rockets Actually Changed the Economics of Space
Landing and reflying a rocket booster sounds like a stunt. Here's why it actually reshaped the cost of getting to orbit.
For decades, every rocket was used once and discarded in the ocean or burned up on reentry, meaning each launch effectively required building an entirely new vehicle from scratch.
Why reuse took so long to achieve
Landing a spent booster precisely enough to refly it requires restarting engines mid-flight, controlling a descent through turbulent air, and touching down within meters of a target, all of which took years of iteration and several dramatic failures before becoming routine.
What actually changed once it worked
Reflying a booster instead of building a new one for every launch cut the largest cost of a rocket launch dramatically, which in turn made much more frequent launches economically viable and directly enabled the current wave of large satellite constellations that would have been unaffordable otherwise.