I agree. Fifty years since we stepped on the moon, and we're just now re-using rockets? It's a great accomplishment, no doubt. Many congratulations to all invo

I agree. Fifty years since we stepped on the moon, and we're just now re-using rockets? It's a great accomplishment, no doubt. Many congratulations to all involved. But this should have been done in the 1970s. The same economic drivers that lead us to do it today were still there back in the day. What happened is that we lost sight of the economics of space travel -- if we ever had our eye on them in the first place. We chased a rabbit down the wrong hole. Political systems exist and thrive for political reasons. NASA was always going to be about bringing home the bacon to defense contractors and looking good for the current administration. Elon is stuck with an economics/efficiency goal: make it both safe and cheap. Just to be clear, my comment has nothing to do with the great folks at Space-X. I'm a huge fan. My point is that they're just continuing the natural evolution of spaceflight. But in the big picture, it's an incremental achievement (and yep, I know how difficult it was. All of this stuff is difficult.) The next big goal is probably regularly-scheduled private manned spaceflights. And no, I don't mean sub-orbital fun rides. More like week-long tourist trips to the space station or a moon base. This would indicate that 1) access to space is truly becoming relatively cheap and reliable, and 2) there's actually somewhere to go. Historic things are things we do for the first time, sure. Re-landing a rocket qualifies, but it is much in the category of orbital-docking: necessary but a footnote. Anybody remember the first manned space mission that did docking? How about that remembering the first one to leave Earth orbit? Space fans like me would know. But not in the history books for the general public. Note that the question was about how historically important this is. Not how critical it is to spaceflight, or any other qualifier. It can be stupendously important in terms of the technical details, yet have very little value historically.