Flight Proven

On a December night in 2015, a slender white rocket climbed off a Florida pad, dropped its spent first stage back through the dark — and landed it, upright and intact, on a concrete circle a few miles away. For the first time an orbital-class booster had flown to the edge of space and come home to fly again. It was the moment the economics of spaceflight began to change, and the moment a company t...