SpaceX flies 'lessons learned' rocket
The California rocket company SpaceX has conducted what is arguably its most important launch to date. Flying out of Florida, the firm’s Falcon-9 vehicle lifted a standard telecommunications satellite for Bangladesh into orbit. But the booster incorporated everything SpaceX has so far learnt about reusability. This "Block 5" version of the Falcon is designed to launch and land at least 10 times without any servicing. Earlier iterations of the rocket have not flown more than twice and required some level of refurbishment between missions."It's taken us 16 years of extreme effort, many iterations and thousands of small but important development changes to get to where we think this is even possible. Crazy hard," said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in a pre-flig...