Launching a rocket is one of the hardest feats to achieve in science and engineering, but there's one challenge that surpasses even the launch: landing a rocket.
This is mainly due to the high speeds, the need for precise navigation, and the brutal atmospheric reentry conditions.
A rocket returning to Earth must decelerate from speeds that can exceed Mach 25, and this requires precise control over its engines and aerodynamic surfaces. This deceleration must be timed perfectly to ensure the rocket slows down enough to make a controlled landing.
Then there's the issue of atmospheric reentry. The rocket must endure extreme heat due to friction with the atmosphere, which can heat the surface of the rocket to around 1,650 degrees Celsius. This requires robust heat shields that add weight and complexity to the design.
The landing itself requires the rocket to execute a series of controlled burns to slow down and touch down precisely at a landing spot.
It's ironic that despite many rocket companies and organizations like NASA launching rockets since the 1950s, it was a newcomer like SpaceX that first successfully achieved the idea of landing and reusing rockets. Traditionally, space agencies around the world treated rockets as expendable items. A typical launch involved using the rocket to propel payloads into orbit, after which the rocket components would generally fall back to Earth and be destroyed or lost in the ocean.
For decades, this method was accepted as the norm due to the immense technical challenges and costs associated with trying to recover and reuse these massive structures. The focus was on ensuring the payload reached orbit rather than the fate of the rocket itself.
However, when Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, he approached space travel from a different angle. He saw these traditional methods as wasteful and a huge barrier to making space travel more accessible.
SpaceX began testing its reusability concept with the Falcon 1, but the major breakthrough occurred in 2015, when they successfully landed the first stage of the Falcon 9 on a landing pad at Cape Canaveral. This was followed by the first successful landing on a drone ship in April 2016.
Although SpaceX has successfully landed Falcon rocket boosters, it's important to note that these rockets are not fully reusable. The Falcon system typically recovers only the first stage, while the second stage and other components are not designed for recovery and reuse.
SpaceX's next big step towards this goal is the development of the Starship, which is designed to be fully reusable. Unlike the Falcon rockets, Starship aims to have both its stages—the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft—return to Earth and be reused.
The Starship system works in two main parts: the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft. The Super Heavy lifts the spacecraft into orbit and then returns to land on Earth, similar to how the Falcon 9's first stage operates.
Currently, SpaceX is focusing on perfecting the recovery of the Super Heavy booster. Once they have reliably achieved this, the next phase will involve working on recovering and reusing the Starship main stage.


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