APROTEC S.A

ELON IN 2010: FULLY REUSABLE ROCKET NEEDED TO MAKE LIFE MULTI-PLANETARY "The really big breakthrough, the fundamental invention that's needed to make life multi-planetary, is a fully reusable orbit-class rocket system. The Space Shuttle is partly reusable, but the main tank is thrown away every time, and even the parts that are supposed to be reusable are so difficult to reuse or refurbish that the Space Shuttle costs about four times as much per flight as an equivalent expendable vehicle. There have been many attempts to build a reusable rocket system, but they have always been canceled once they discovered that success was not one of the possible outcomes. But this is fundamentally something that has to be solved if life's got to become multi-planetary. At SpaceX, we're hoping to make some progress in that direction." Source: Elon Musk lecture at Yale University. October 14, 2010.