Musk wants to make Falcon rockets fully reusable

SpaceX chief Elon Musk said last week he is “fairly confident” his company’s Falcon rockets can be made fully reusable within a couple of years, suggesting a renewed emphasis on outfitting upper stages for a scorching re-entry after engineers shelved the idea to focus on landing the launcher’s bigger booster stage. The launch firm revealed a concept to recover and reuse both stages of the Falcon 9 rocket in 2011, but visible technical progress has been limited to the first stage in the last few years. Landing and relaunching the Falcon 9’s first stage presented a lesser challenge to SpaceX’s engineers, and the booster is the most valuable part of the rocket, representing about 70 percent of its total cost. More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Apr 12)