If the first stage were to "fly" all the way back to land after separating from the second stage, that would require some combination of a heavier/stronger rocket to hold more fuel, and a reduced payload capacity to orbit.
Blue Origin only does short, up-and-down flights -- they are not trying to achieve orbit so there is no need for horizontal travel. They can simply shut off the rocket and fall back to the launch site.
You write it as a hypothetical, but that's actually how SpaceX landed their first first booster. It was Falcon 9 Flight 20, which deployed 11 Orbcomm satellites.
Infographic of the trajectory: https://i.imgur.com/D9BdO86.png
SpaceX has done 'land' landings in the past as well (for lighter payloads they have enough fuel to turn around and come all the way back to land).
EDIT: Here's a quick explainer on the topic with shiny graphics: http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a18711/blue-or...
The initial (publicly shown) iteration was Grasshopper, it looked like this [0].
After that there was F9R-Dev, which looked like this [1] (it's pretty much just a F9 first stage). At some point they added grid fins, which look like this on the vehicle [2] and this up close [3] (note the anti-pidgeon spikes are being added purely for display, they are not attached during flight). Other than that there haven't really been any visible iterations, the legs look like this [4] and have since the F9R-Dev.
[0] http://spacenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Grasshopper_...
[1] http://i.imgur.com/ZTpp8pP.jpg
[2] http://www.spaceflight101.net/uploads/6/4/0/6/6406961/518499...
[3] http://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SPACEX-...
Blue Origin's mission allows it because it's suborbital. That is: it doesn't actually go anywhere other than straight up. That's also why they can launch in the middle of Texas.
Blue Origin's accomplishments (especially their engine designs) are nothing to sneeze at, but SpaceX is currently in a completely different league. The fact that they have to land on a barge is a result of how scaled and practical their technology is; that they succeed in doing so is an unprecedented achievement in launch vehicle technology.
I may be completely wrong here but I'm fairly certain that's what I remember reading.
IIRC Blue were sitting on some "landing on a barge" patents that SpaceX successfully fought, because they were far too obvious.
Humanity holds the record for the fastest awe to yawn delta.
Among what species?
>Compared to what was achieved in the 60s it doesn't seem that impressive.
Is all of computing since 1960 unexciting and pointless? It's just making computers faster and cheaper, so what? The internet? We already had networks, who cares? It turns out that scale matters. Cost matters. Access matters. Details matter. If you can't see the value of treating rockets more like airplanes then you have a small-minded worldview and I don't know what to tell you.
History is littered with inventions that didn't amount to a hill of beans until someone else found a way to turn that invention into an awesome product and sell it to a much wider audience.
When a trip into orbit costs $20,000 then a lot more people can go. When it costs $2,000 then anyone in the developed world can go. What impact that will have on our society?
But it's not about landing the boosters, it's about what this will enable in the future. If Musk really can reduce the cost to orbit by a factor of 100 it will revolutionise space transport. Imagine a series of moon landings just like in the 60s and 70s, but all using the same launchers and spacecraft? How about manned missions to Mars in reusable ships? It's the first step in a new era. So ok it's not headline grabing next to the moon landings. But compared to that, the Mercury missions don't look all that much of an achievement in hindsight. Yet they were vital groundwork.
They need to be redesigned and SpaceX is twiddling around the issue to avoid the r&d cost. If I was NASA I would be very hesitant to use their rockets for people at this point
That's a pretty specific claim that "they need to be redesigned and SpaceX is twiddling around the issue to avoid the r&d cost." Do you have any evidence to support that?
The strut failure is what SpaceX reported but it could have also been a COPV explosion.
Two confirmed COPV explosions and a third possible explosion. SpaceX itself mentioned that an improved design will be done in the future because they had to modify their fueling schedule to increase the safety margin in the things.
in 30 years
Your second paragraph is awfully definitive coming from someone who doesn't seem to know what actually happened.
Many rockets exploded before the Russians or Americans got their first astronauts into space, and others exploded even afterwards. That doesn't mean those designs were failures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...
(Nikon D7000, 300mm, handheld. Cropped and adjusted for contrast.)
https://www.realms.org/pics/spacex/IMG_1152.JPG https://www.realms.org/pics/spacex/IMG_1158.JPG https://www.realms.org/pics/spacex/IMG_1195.JPG https://www.realms.org/pics/spacex/IMG_1205.JPG https://www.realms.org/pics/spacex/IMG_1208.JPG https://www.realms.org/pics/spacex/IMG_1209.JPG
It was extremely loud. It was my first launch, and it was surprising. You could feel your chest rumbling, and the car I was standing next to was visibly vibrating.
Freaking amazing experience!
This is where we were standing: https://goo.gl/maps/1eAurqSuD722
Imagine an erect column of fire with a 16m base that goes up 322m... That'd be an awesome thing.
(I'm very jealous; I'd love to see a launch, but neither Switzerland nor the UK have functioning space programs, and French Guiana is a bit far too walk...)
I didn't hear it going up but there was a loud rumble on the return. (Which I couldn't see from my vantage point.)
Did they launch westward? Why?
I'm curious to find out what they changed. One of the problems they previously had was that the vibration from the rocket landing was too much for a satellite connection on the barge (or it's nearby support ship); there were other issues on the rocket. Maybe being right next to the coast the whole time helps on a polar launch?
Just speculation, but there could easily be earth viewing spy telescopes, wide band radio capture, or space weapons tacked on these
No onboard ascent footage or fuel tank footage this time, alas.
This time the descent video seemed more "real". On the last barge landing it was so quick that it seemed magical.
The broadcast glitched out and when it came back the rocket had landed. The timing made it seem like it really slammed down, but if you look at a simulation of how fast it was really going, it looks a lot less "magic" (although still crazy impressive!)
I suspect the reason for the swift return to flight is half that fact, and half that SpaceX is more bureaucratically efficient.
If it were to have happened on a manned flight, even with nobody was on-board during the test, then I doubt we'd be seeing return to flight so quickly.
The flare predictor[1] on the Heavens Above website will presumably shut down when the last of the old satellites goes.
Wait. actually...
