After many attempts and plenty of ridicule, SpaceX finally stuck the landing on their remote controlled floating barge on Friday! This is a big deal, a really big deal. Not only does this milestone finally silence the critics, it sticks a big fat stake in the ground for private space launch endeavors. Consider the operational economies SpaceX is pioneering for commercial launch operations. Think about it this way: the cost of a shuttle flight was about half a billion dollars; these were good for about 32 tons of payload. That works out to about $7700 per pound lofted into LEO (low earth orbit). Currenty SpaceX is launching 15 tons to that same LEO destination for $60 million dollars, or, about $2100 per pound. This is already an economic improvement of almost 3x…and is just the *tip of the iceberg. The single trip price of a reusable Falcon-9 launch is about $600,000! This represents a basic cost to LEO of an incredibly low $21 PER POUND. While this does not roll up the wear & tear on the rocket (they are hoping to get 20 launches per $60M Falcon). This is the game changer many of us have dreamt of. Consider some of the details: Sticker price on a Falcon-9 is about $60MUSD, fuel is another f$250K. If they only get 10 launches per rocket (the target is 20), the price per pound (to LEO) works out about to an incredible $215 per launch (on an amazingly low $6.3M per launch!), with a potential to bring it down under $100 per LEO-pound. A Game Changer indeed. We wish them luck and success! There are lots of folks writing about this and honestly, The Falcon-9 is quite a bandwagon to be on! Here are some of the nicer Falcon-9 write-ups: http://www.popsci.com/why-spacexs-rocket-landing-on-drone-ship-is-big-deal http://www.vox.com/2016/4/8/11395348/spacex-falcon-landing-reusable http://www.wired.com/2016/04/spacex-just-stuck-historic-landing-now/ http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/06/24/why-and-how-landing-rockets Dragon Rendezvous with the ISS: https://youtu.be/hCB6MjWYYj4