Reusable rockets
Launch vehicles designed to fly back, land, and fly again — cutting the cost of reaching orbit by recovering the hardware rather than discarding it.
A rocket's first stage is most of the vehicle by mass and cost. Expendable designs discard it in the ocean after one use. A reusable rocket must survive reentry, then flip, reignite its engines, and land precisely — under its own thrust or on a suspended grid. The hard part is the mass penalty: fuel reserved for the return burn, heat shielding, and landing legs all subtract from payload. The economic case only closes if turnaround is fast enough and the vehicle flies often enough to amortize those penalties across many flights.
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The $1.75 trillion ask
SpaceX's IPO prospectus seeks the largest raise in history — about $75 billion at a valuation north of $1.75 trillion — priced at roughly 94 times revenue on a company still losing billions a year.
Starship's new engines fly
Starship's third-generation vehicle flew for the first time on May 22, lofting 44 tonnes of dummy satellites on the maiden flight of the Raptor 3 engine — then its booster failed the burn home and crashed into the sea.
The $4-billion launch Congress wouldn't kill
The White House budget called the Moon rocket SLS 'grossly expensive' at $4 billion a flight and moved to cancel it; Congress refused, and the rocket it tried to kill still launches the next crew to lunar orbit.
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