Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are working on reusable rockets, that can land themselves and save the companies millions of dollars, and makes sending payload or people to space significantly cheaper. Reusable Rockets compared to the costly one use rockets is an amazing cost-saving development in aerospace technology. The technology developed by Spacex and Blue Origin allowed them to land their rockets successfully back on the ground for reuse. One of the first instances of this technology working is back in December of 2015 when SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of their rocket during an orbital launch, which also deployed 11 satellites into orbit. Blue Origin also carried out a test flight similar to this with his rocket and successfully landed the suborbital rocket back on the ground. The two companies' achievement shows promise for cheaper space flight and technology seems to be propelled faster by the Ceo's Rivalry. While in 2015 they were successful with this technology in operation, research and development of prototypes started before that with the grasshopper prototype in 2012, which they used to test their concept. More recently though the technology is used more frequently with Spacex using their Falcon 9 rocket and landing the first stage on an autonomous ship in the water. Also, it has been used to bring astronauts to the space station for a much cheaper price.

The technology is fairly easy to explain however execution is more than difficult and takes strenuous effort to execute successfully. A simple explanation though of how this all works so far is as follows the Falcon 9 rocket, launches then ascends at a tilt to get into orbit.

Then before reaching orbit at the rocket does a flip using thrusters and the first stage separates. Following that the first stage begins an entry burn, then an autonomous guidance landing system takes over so it can make the vertical landing on the drone ship in the water that acts similar to a net.

The task of landing and reusing a rocket is very challenging for many reasons, but one of the main reasons is that the design is not meant for landing vertically. The rockets' purpose is just to carry stuff to space and this is designed is one of the better ways of doing that. Lunar landers are more built to land vertically however they cannot launch a payload into space, the point being that the design needs to stay roughly the same so it can efficiently carry a payload to outer space. One good example of what it is like to land a rocket-like this is holding a broomstick upright on one hand which you will most likely find pretty difficult. This is a great example as it shows the boosters limited range of motion.

The main issues from where we are now with the technology are that the rocket can't just be reused by simply filling up the rocket with more fuel as the rockets we have now have 2 stages and the second stage just is left in space as debris.