[giantrobot]

> Not addressing the point of my comment here ^, but why didn't anyone else do it if it was feasible and possible?

Because their customers didn't need it. The medium lift space only has a few players because there's not a huge number of customers. In heavy lift there's even fewer customers.

The established players had legacy expendable stacks with a proven flight history. There was no incentive to redesign their systems to be reusable and then start fresh with a flight record.

> And how long would it have taken an agency like NASA to actually start and complete the project?

SpaceX has gotten considerable amounts of money from NASA to develop the Falcon 9. Even the video you shared is SpaceX landing their rockets at a NASA facility. SpaceX is essentially a NASA subcontractor developing a reusable rocket. So the answer to your question is whatever amount of time it's taken SpaceX to develop the reusable Falcon 9.

Like I said, SpaceX has done some cool things. I'm not trying to take away from their real accomplishments. But there's some ridiculous fanboy shit around Musk and his companies. He's done a good job of publicizing his companies' accomplishments and people seem to jump to a conclusion that they just invented concepts whole cloth that could have never existed without some magic.