Jeff Bezos has clearly tested the reusable booster beyond Elon Musk’s Falcon grasshopper architecture. We are on the dawn of a new era in recoverable launch boosters and precision computer-controlled booster landings. These technologies all benefit future space missions including Mars and Lunar landings and such amazing feats as the European Space Agency Rosetta Philae probe which soft landed on an asteroid in an area half the size of a football field…and the Rosetta spacecraft which hard crashed last week at end of mission on a precise spot. Placing the Philae landing in spatial context it would be the equivalent of throwing a basketball in orbit from DC and making a basket in a planned decent on a designated basketball hoop in Los Angeles. (that would likely be a 5 or 10 million point shot) While space is still fickle and has its failures, I think we are getting smarter and better at guidance and controls, materials sciences, booster technologies, remote sensing, and safety.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/10/05/why-jeff-bezos-may-crash-his-historic-rocket/
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