Don't you mean the SpaceShuttle in the 80s? or Delta Clipper which didn't reach orbit? Really, what SpaceX did was radically different from the tests in the 90

Don't you mean the SpaceShuttle in the 80s? or Delta Clipper which didn't reach orbit? Really, what SpaceX did was radically different from the tests in the 90s from the rockets, to the controls, to the reusability goals. Otherwise they wouldn't have built Grasshopper. Now NewGlen is kinda a knockoff of Delta Clipper, but that's a different beast.