SpaceX achieved early, successful tests of booster recovery, witnessing an ocean landing and explosion followed by a pad landing in December 2015 and the first drone-ship landing in April 2016. A Falcon 9 first stage was reflown less than a year later. Many competitors and agencies remained skeptical of reuse approaches in the mid-2010s. Europe pursued Ariane 6 and Japan pursued H3 as expendable-rocket programs, leaving both about a decade behind in launch technology. United Launch Alliance publicly favored a modular engine-section return concept called SMART and initially dismissed full booster flyback reuse. Success of Starship could widen SpaceX's lead.
"I remember watching the live video and seeing the light of the engine on the ocean," Mueller said. "And holy shit, it was there. The rocket came down, landed in the ocean, and blew up. That was unreal. It worked the first time. I was like, get the barge ready. Get the landing legs ready. This shit works." It would take a good deal more tinkering and experimentation, but by December 2015, SpaceX had landed its first rocket on a pad along the Florida coast.
Many people in the industry were skeptical about SpaceX's approach to reuse. In the mid-2010s, both the European and Japanese space agencies were looking to develop their next generation of rockets. In both cases, Europe with the Ariane 6 and Japan with the H3, the space agencies opted for traditional, expendable rockets instead of pushing toward reuse. As a result, both of these competitors for commercial satellite launches are now about a decade behind SpaceX in terms of launch technology.
Almost one decade ago, to the date, United Launch Alliance began sharing a graphic that demonstrated its approach-to separate only the engine section of the Vulcan rocket-was superior. The company dubbed this approach SMART, an acronym for Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology. The implication in this name, of course, is that SpaceX's booster flyback approach was dumb. According to the United Launch Alliance analysis in 2015, the SMART plan would result in cost savings as soo
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