Elon Musk gets much attention and praise for Tesla. But would argue here is where he is doing the most innovation and pushing science and technology the furthest ahead. This is game changing.
Yes. But this the first successful land on a floating platform of the reusable rocket. Will save launch costs by 1/3 (not landing on the floating platform, but reusing the rocket).
Act 2 is flying Musk's recovered first stage again. On that, can anyone inform if space shuttle's parachuted SRBs were ever reflown? Even in part? That was the point.
Yes, but the SRBs breakdown into a heck of a lot of parts. They were not simple bottle rockets scaled up, but had lots of controls, modularity and monitoring systems. Also, the inspection, rework, and refurbishment made the "reuse" advantage a lot less than originally proposed. So while a lot of parts were reused, a whole lot of "better parts" were made to replace the reusable parts.
