Another rocketry firm experiments with recycling its launchers
If it is successful, it will make getting to orbit cheaper still
AS TECHNOLOGICAL FEATS go, recovering and relaunching the first stage of a space rocket ranks pretty high on the scale of difficulty. So far, only SpaceX, an American giant, has pulled it off. But another outfit now seems close to doing so—albeit on a rather smaller scale. Shortly after the local weather calms (and thus after this story was published), a firm called Rocket Lab plans to dispatch a mission dubbed “There and Back Again”.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Rocket Lab’s grab”
From the April 30th 2022 edition
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