This is John Batchelor, conversation with my colleague Bob Zimmerman about the concept of vertically

landing a booster, the first-stage booster.

It is clearly the advantage that SpaceX enjoys. The puzzle for me was why didn't anybody do this

before? The expenses of throwing away a first stage and second stage and third stage made space travel out of reach of

anything but a sovereign fund that would be a government and now why doesn't everybody use a first-stage booster return again and again and again?

SpaceX, I believe, is up to 19, 20, 21 times of using the same Falcon 9 booster.

Bob Zimmerman gives the answer.

It's surprising in how simple it is.

Why didn't anyone do this before?

Bob Zimmerman, behind the black, a genius decision at SpaceX.

More later. Is that correct?

No.

No.

No. The reusable boosters that SpaceX does is a totally SpaceX idea because for decades engineers were saying it was completely impractical

in fact impossible to vertically land a first stage and then be able to reuse it. And Elon Musk said, no, we're going to design it. We're going to figure it out

and we're going to make it work. Everyone had said this was never going to work and so

that this is totally a SpaceX idea. It doesn't come from anything out of NASA

NASA

NASA developed the idea of reusability

with the space shuttle and their concept there was to use something that could

come back

and land like an airplane on a runway, but not to reuse the first

...