Reusable rocket already dominated the market since around 2020. Now it’s slowly becoming the norm
DarkArcher__ on
It already has. Reusable rockets launch the overwhelming majority of mass to orbit every year
R-Dragon_Thunderzord on
Did they wind up blowing up dozens of them first?
Fuzzy-Mud-197 on
Imagine how people from ula will be looking at this, they scoffed their nose at reusabilty and here comes blue origin who is most likely about to steal all their lunch(juicy contracts) they already stole Tory Bruno
Adeldor on
PS: Image is a screencap from Blue Origin’s livestream.
redstercoolpanda on
Pretty much, you’re pretty hard pressed to find any new rocket proposal by a non legacy company that doesn’t involve some form of reuse these days. ULA in particular are utterly screwed, they did a risky bet by optimising Vulcan to compete with a non reusable Falcon 9 and they lost massively.
Knightforlife on
I saw a video by Thunderfoot, a YouTuber who likes picking apart anything Elon (understandable), who did some back-of-the-envelope math suggesting it’s “only” cheaper to do re-usable if you can use the same rocket at least 3 times. But now industry norm is pushing way past that.
Acceptable-Bag-5835 on
didn’t they reuse the solid rocket booster from the space shuttle since 1981?
CPTMotrin on
598 successful recoveries by Space X so far made this point moot about 500 launches ago.
tj177mmi1 on
I’m going to push back on this. Reuse will only be normal operations for companies that have the flight cadence that makes it more economically feasible.
SpaceX got there with Starlink. Blue Origin is going to get there with Amazon Kuiper/Leo (whatever it is called these days). Rocket Lab might get there with smaller payloads being able to be put in whatever orbit the customer wants at a relatively low cost.
Even at its high point in the last 30 years, Atlas launching more than 10 times a year was rare. And Delta came nowhere close to that.
iqisoverrated on
If you look at who does how many launches then reuse has dominated the space industry for quite some time – even though it was only one company doing it.
E.g. of 330 Launches worldwide in 2025 165 were done by SpaceX (exactly half). (And of the 13 failures only 3 were by SpaceX.)
Mike__O on
It’s time to seriously look into integrating Orion onto New Glenn and putting SLS out to pasture.
Merkava18 on
$RKLB is an actual operation with reusable boosters and it already traded. Important. Not headed by a lunatic.
fakeaccount572 on
you know we’ve flown reusable boosters since the late 70’s right?
GerardHard on
Yeah no kidding, it’s the future of Earth to Orbit launch vehicle. China is also working on reusable rockets like it’s Long March 10 series.
15 Comments
Reusable rocket already dominated the market since around 2020. Now it’s slowly becoming the norm
It already has. Reusable rockets launch the overwhelming majority of mass to orbit every year
Did they wind up blowing up dozens of them first?
Imagine how people from ula will be looking at this, they scoffed their nose at reusabilty and here comes blue origin who is most likely about to steal all their lunch(juicy contracts) they already stole Tory Bruno
PS: Image is a screencap from Blue Origin’s livestream.
Pretty much, you’re pretty hard pressed to find any new rocket proposal by a non legacy company that doesn’t involve some form of reuse these days. ULA in particular are utterly screwed, they did a risky bet by optimising Vulcan to compete with a non reusable Falcon 9 and they lost massively.
I saw a video by Thunderfoot, a YouTuber who likes picking apart anything Elon (understandable), who did some back-of-the-envelope math suggesting it’s “only” cheaper to do re-usable if you can use the same rocket at least 3 times. But now industry norm is pushing way past that.
didn’t they reuse the solid rocket booster from the space shuttle since 1981?
598 successful recoveries by Space X so far made this point moot about 500 launches ago.
I’m going to push back on this. Reuse will only be normal operations for companies that have the flight cadence that makes it more economically feasible.
SpaceX got there with Starlink. Blue Origin is going to get there with Amazon Kuiper/Leo (whatever it is called these days). Rocket Lab might get there with smaller payloads being able to be put in whatever orbit the customer wants at a relatively low cost.
Even at its high point in the last 30 years, Atlas launching more than 10 times a year was rare. And Delta came nowhere close to that.
If you look at who does how many launches then reuse has dominated the space industry for quite some time – even though it was only one company doing it.
E.g. of 330 Launches worldwide in 2025 165 were done by SpaceX (exactly half). (And of the 13 failures only 3 were by SpaceX.)
It’s time to seriously look into integrating Orion onto New Glenn and putting SLS out to pasture.
$RKLB is an actual operation with reusable boosters and it already traded. Important. Not headed by a lunatic.
you know we’ve flown reusable boosters since the late 70’s right?
Yeah no kidding, it’s the future of Earth to Orbit launch vehicle. China is also working on reusable rockets like it’s Long March 10 series.