The History Of Reusable Rockets: SpaceX and It’s Predecessors
By: Andrei Petrut
Tags: Spacex, Space, Space Exploration, Rockets, Reusable

SpaceX’s success at landing and reusing the Falcon 9 rocket has led many to believe that they are the first to make this attempt. That is far from the truth. A fully reusable space launch system has long been the holy grail of space flight. To a great extent, the Space Shuttle could be considered a partially reusable rocket, though maybe not on the same level as the Falcon 9. However, even outside of the STS, there have been several attempts at accomplishing this feat. Here are some examples:

McDonnell Douglas DC-X (Delta Clipper)

The McDonnell Douglass DC-X was an uncrewed rocket that was designed for vertical take off and vertical landing. It was developed during the 1990s after the men who came up with the concept failed to convince Lockheed-Martin to fund the development internally. Ultimately, they were able to get funding to develop a prototype from the US DOD’s Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). The program was remarkable because it followed the same sort of “fail fast/fail forward” approach that SpaceX uses, unheard in the aerospace industry at the time.

The program had several test flights at ever increasing altitudes, maxing out at 2500m in 1995. At this point they ran out of funding and transferred the program to NASA who made some technological advancements on the test article and continued funding for about a year before cancelling the program.

NASA/Lockheed Martin X-33/Venture Star

The VentureStar was a program proposed by Lockheed Martin and funded by the US Government. It was designed to take off vertically and land horizontally using it’s own internal fuel tanks (as opposed to the solid and external fuel tank of the STS). The intent was that the VentureStar would be inspected in a hangar like a normal aircraft, then rotated to launch position, launched, and returned to Earth via a normal runway.

The final deliverable would be a spacecraft slightly shorter than the full STS stack, but almost twice as wide. But the first step was to build a technology demonstrator known as the X-33. Several components of the X-33 were constructed including the linear aerospike engine and a metallic thermal protection system, but the program ultimately failed because technology at the time was unable to construct a carbon fiber fuel tank capable of holding the liquid hydrogen propellant under launch conditions. Thus, the program was cancelled in 2001. Ironically, three years later, Northrup Grumman and NASA announced that they had figured out the technology needed to build the tanks.

Rotary Rocket Company Roton ATV

Another contender in the 1990s was the Roton. This vehicle was initially intended to fly to high altitudes utilizing a helicopter rotor. At this point rocket engines would take over, propelling the vehicle to orbit. It was designed to service the small communications satellite market. However, with the failure of the Iridium Corporation, much of that market evaporated. The vehicle was then redesigned to service heavier payloads.

Ultimately, this vehicle never flew. In 2000, engine development ceased and less than a year later, the company closed its doors. Ultimately, the problem with this venture wasn’t the design (although, there is some debate as to whether the concept would have ultimately worked out), rather it was the unfortunate timing of Iridium’s collapse that evaporated available funding.