[Clewza313]

Virgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with the spaceplane though. Sticking a capsule on top of a rocket and bringing it down with parachutes has been done since the 1960s, and SpaceX beat them to landing the launcher as well.

[ja27]

SpaceX only "beat" them to a landing if you're disregarding suborbital flights.

Blue Origin landed their booster 23 Nov 2015. SpaceX landed their first booster 21 Dec 2015.

It really is apples and oranges until BO or VG gets to orbit. Rocket Lab is likely much closer to orbital booster re-use than BO or VG are.

[Tossrock]

Blue Origin only "beat" SpaceX if you allow BO's test flight and disallow SpaceX's - SpaceX was landing their Grasshopper prototype as early as 2012.

[jpgvm]

Precisely. Landing a booster is difficult but creating or orbital class rocket is an order of magnitude more difficult. SpaceX just did the hard part first.

[zajio1am]

> Virgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with the spaceplane though.

Sticking rocket-propelled spaceplane under big aircraft and landing horizontally was also done in 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15