Today, if you want to go to space, there are four main launch providers (AKA rocket companies). These are Roscosmos, United Launch Alliance, Space Exploration Technologies Inc. and Arianespace. Over these there are fifteen (I keep remembering more) launchers (rockets), of which five have yet to be implemented. All but two of the upcoming ones include a feature which is looking to become pretty common: reusability.

Reusability

Reusability in rocketry refers to the ability to launch a rocket, land it, and then launch it again. Since 1957, the launch of Sputnik I, the very first rocket, rockets have been “expendable”. Here the rocket would be thrown away after launch and left to be destroyed. The rocket Avian I isan example I’ll use; it’s not a real rocket. If an Avian I costs $60 million to build, you can recover it for cost savings. Recover it and launch it again. How much does it cost now? $30 million. This is the beauty of reusability.

A Little Rocket Company

Internet billionaire Elon Musk had A Problem. He had discovered an old Soviet rocket manual (source: Elon’s biography). For those that have no idea what Soviet technology is like, it’s old, heavy, clunky and obsolete, but also awesome. See the Lomo 19A9 microphone. I recently had a sound expert explain it to me: “By the standards of modern mics, it’s got a bit of background noise, but also a lot of character”. Along with this rocket manual (you can find these on the internet) he joined the Mars Society, a society to colonise Mars. One of the missions he sketched out was a mission to send mice to Mars. This resulted in him receiving a wheel of cheese. He and some NASA engineers realised that this wouldn’t work, so he thought about creating a mission called Mars Oasis. The Oasis would cultivate a plant on Mars, so he went to the leaders in rocket launches.

The Russians.

They promptly gave him vastly inflated quotes. In anger, he quit the negotations and fled Russia (I don’t blame him). On the plane back, his friends were celebrating successfully leaving Russia, whereas Elon was tinkering with a spreadsheet. When his friends asked what he was doing, his answer was:

Hey, guys, I think we can build this rocket ourselves.

Four years later, the rocket exploded.

Five years later, the rocket exploded.

Six years later, the rocket also exploded.

Six years later, the Falcon 1, named for the Millenium Falcon, reached orbit. Space Exploration Technologies, Inc. was not going to go bust.

Seven years later the Falcon 1 launched its last payload, Razaksat.

Falcon 9

The last launch of Falcon 1 was not due to a lack of funding, rather the fact that the Falcon 1 was, by rocket standards, very weak. It catered to the SmallSat market, which is for small satellites. Smallsats are typically under 500kg in mass. Of course, Elon still had large ambitions, to set up a colony on a planet called Mars. This would cost a lot of money. Estimates put it at $100 billion+. In other words, a ton.

Now, you aren’t going to get rich launching miniature satellites thrice a year. Smallsat operators aren’t typically rich, so there is little appetite for high prices. In order to earn a ton of money for Mars, SpaceX created the Falcon 9. The 9 had nine engines in its first stage, as the 1 had one, and it would carry heavy payloads to orbit and then land, enabling it to be recovered and relaunched.

The first payload on the Falcon 9 was the Dragon 1. At the time, it was simply known as Dragon, and it was an ISS cargo capsule. A diagram, by the fantastic ZLSA Design, shows off the Dragon below.