How did we get into the rocketry revolution - the cheaper and more available access to space, enabling all kinds of space projects
Rockets are notoriously expensive to design and make. But even more annoying was their habit to get used only once - you launch it, it works (or not) and it's gone. Given how expensive they are - a Russian rocket designer once compared a large rocket to a town by the level of efforts to build - it is a very visible problem. USA tried to solve it with Space Shuttle, starting with 1980-s, with results which weren't good enough. Another approach was demonstrated by McDonnell Douglas DC-X in 1990-s - a rocket which can launch and then land, using its own engines, softly on the launch pad. There were a lot of arguments pro and contra the reusable rockets - the critics pointed to more costly design and reduced payloads. It looked like reusable rockets could be beneficial if only we'd have much more space flights than we do, but where do we get the payloads - which pay
Then came SpaceX. First, it streamlined the rocket itself - the Falcon-9 is straightforward, inexpensive, a rather conservative approach. It was already cheap, being a clean-sheet design, but then SpaceX decided to make the first stage reusable, and after a few years of efforts they've got it. The reusable first stage would significantly - tens of percent - reduce the cost of launches, but what about payloads SpaceX started the project Starlink - a sort of an engine converting launches, which SpaceX could make, into revenue. This cemented the current lead SpaceX enjoys in the launch industry, and helped to finance the Starship project, which is focused on making reusable second stage, even cheaper flights and large payloads in one launch. And here we are - already in the middle of falling prices for access to space, and predicting even lower prices in a few years. Do we hear the thunder of coming changes