[wormlord]

> Sorry but no, this is absolutely not what happened

What didn't happen? I didn't provide you a narrative, I gave 2 examples of uncrewed propulsive landing which literally happened.

> There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about, and actually landing a heavy orbital rocket, and then doing it 100 times in a row without a hiccup.

I agree. Now please point to me which part of the self-landing booster Elon built.

[throw5959]

I told you what didn't happen - the situation wasn't as clear as you say. Everybody in the space industry was absolutely sure he is totally crazy and it's impossible to do with an entire first/second stage rocket booster.

He built the company that built the booster, which to me is at least as interesting as building the booster itself.

It's not just about money - Bezos has much more money available than SpaceX had in 2002-2015, and yet his rockets still don't land.

[LorenDB]

Actually, Blue Origin beat SpaceX to land a booster. The difference is that BO landed New Shepard, which can barely bump a manned capsule over the Karman line, whereas SpaceX is landing an orbital-class booster, which is a much more difficult proposition.

I do agree though that SpaceX has used their money much more efficiently and moved a lot faster in general than BO.