Driving around today, I was thinking about how SpaceX has flown so many reusable, Falcon 9 rockets by landing them. The technical challenge is like the old 'Lunar' program. Apollo 11 was the first rocket to land and take off to orbit July 20, 1969. Between Apollo 11 and SpaceX, NASA experimented with single stage to orbit, the DC-X. There was also the disastrously expensive Space Shuttle. Still in development, Blue Origin pops up and down and has yet to put a satellite into orbit. SpaceX, block 5 did a hold-down engine test and assuming any problems are resolved, it will put Bangabandhu 1 (Bangladesh) into orbit this week. Block 5 was designed to be manned space flight qualified. There have been a series of engineering upgrades that can ONLY happen if you are launching these rockets frequently and gathering 'lessons learned.' The only remaining NASA concern is fueling the rocket with the crew aboard which seems a little 'anal retentive.' Nothing about rockets is without risk but this one doesn't impress me. When an earlier Falcon exploded, the accident analysis identified a helium pressure tank as the root cause and it was fixed. That was all but impossible with the manned Space Shuttle that could not be flown unmanned. Bob Wilson
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. NASA advisers say SpaceX rocket technology could put lives at risk - Chicago Tribune
It may also be correct that Apollo system was the first (inhabited) rocket-controlled soft landing after descent. Taken together, that was a heckuva pile of technology and remains vastly under appreciated. Both soft landing and return to orbit happened in 1/6 Earth gravity which made things easier. OTOH, the entire mission depended on perfect performance of several systems including restarting rocket engines. After having sat around in the most aggressive fugitive-dust environment we yet know of. Or else Nixon would have read 'that other speech'...
I read the story too but perhaps the simplest approach is to launch more Falcon rockets so the total number of launches equal the134 Space Shuttle missions. We know there was one Shuttle launch failure and even after that failure, Space Shuttle missions continued after an engineering analysis and change. The one SpaceX launch failure was traced to a defective helium tank that was redesigned. Bob Wilson
I work for one of these launch vehicle manufacturers. SpaceX nor any of it's competitors just have not received Human Rating yet. That's why we're still taking rides on Russian vehicles. Here's a link to the current work being done by US manufacturers to achieve that rating. Commercial Crew Development - Wikipedia
But that was two separate stacked rockets. Lower stage did all the landing work, only the upper stage took off back to orbit. The landing engine & stage was not re-used. Both Shuttle failures really happened at launch. We just didn't learn about the second one until the other end of the mission.
