Ready for its next mission?  Rockets are spectacular machines.
They are also spectacularly wasteful. The Saturn Vs that
launched astronauts to the moon were flying cathedrals of pipes,
pumps, valves and switches; each had 6m or so working parts. And
after travelling for a few minutes, their components were dumped
unceremoniously into the sea, or left to drift in space.  Looked
at this way, space flight is insane: it is analogous to building
a new airliner for every flight, and then dismantling it on
arrival. Buying a rocket launch is so expensive that only
governments and big companies can afford it.  A reusable rocket
could cut costs dramatically. It was this idea that inspired
America’s space shuttle, although political compromises and
over-optimistic engineering meant that NASA never came close to
its expected cost savings.  Starting in 2014, SpaceX, the most
successful member of the privately run New Space industry, plans
to have another go. It hopes to modify its two-stage Falcon 9
rockets so that they c