Not to rain too much on your harping, but the DC-X program did vertical landing 30 years ago.

dotancohen 9 months ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, and that was all the experimental program did. No humans on board, no payloads, no orbit, not even suborbital as they stayed close to the ground.

The Falcon 9 puts humans into orbit then turns around and lands not far from the launch tower. It's then brought in for maintenance and a few weeks later launching again - some of them have done 20 flights.

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pyrale 9 months ago | parent [-]

You’re comparing an experimental program that lasted 6 years with a company founded 22 years ago. How many payload flights did space-x do 6 years into its existence?

	▲	dotancohen 9 months ago \| parent [-]
		No, you made that comparison two posts up. I just replied to you ))

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eecc 9 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Nice, what happened of it?

	▲	pyrale 9 months ago \| parent [-]
		It happened at about the time budgetary winter happened for the us space budget, so there was no follow-up on the demonstrator.