In rocketry, what goes up usually comes down in pieces.
The cost of getting to orbit is exorbitant, because the rocket, with its multimillion-dollar engines, ends up as trash in the ocean after one launching.
Elon Musk, the chief executive of the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, better known as SpaceX, likens the waste to throwing away a 747 jet after a single transcontinental flight.
“Reusability is the critical breakthrough needed in rocketry to take things to the next level,” Mr. Musk said in October during a talk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
On Tuesday, his company hopes to upend the economics of space travel.
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