All SpaceX Reusable Launch Vehicles

A class of orbital and interplanetary launch vehicles engineered by the American aerospace company SpaceX with recovery and reuse of major flight hardware as a core design goal, rather than treating every stage as single use. The class spans SpaceX's medium-lift Falcon 9, whose first stage lands vertically and has flown hundreds of missions since 2010, through the fully reusable Starship system, whose booster and upper stage are both designed to be recovered and refurbished for rapid relaunch. Reusable launch vehicles of this kind depart from the traditional expendable model, in which an entire rocket is discarded after a single flight, by returning propulsive stages to a landing site or pad for inspection and reflight, a strategy proponents argue substantially lowers the marginal cost of reaching orbit. The approach has been demonstrated operationally at large scale by Falcon 9's booster recovery program and is being extended further by Starship's stated goal of full and rapid reusability for both stages of an orbital class rocket.