Significant Technological Advancement

This is one of, if not the most, significant technological advancements in the past few years. If you don't want to click on the link it is a video of SpaceX landing a first stage rocket back on earth after launching a satellite into space. The crowd is going crazy and rightly so.

The reason this is significant is the cost of building a rocket and going to space is 97% taken up by the rocket itself. Only 3% is the fuel. So if most of the rocket can be reused that drops the cost of following trips to space a LOT cheaper. SpaceX's goal is to be able to have a rocket take a payload into space, return, and be on it's way back up in three hours. THREE HOURS! That's crazy folks.

Now to further break down why cheaper space travel is significant let's talk about money. Today it costs about $10,000/pound to get stuff into Earth orbit. So everything that goes up has to have a very good reason for going. Nothing is extra. Every component is designed to be as robust and light as possible. Also, because of the cost, there isn't going to be any resupply or maintenance missions to fix something that breaks. This means that every system on a satellite has multiple backup systems. This makes building a satellite very expensive on top of the high launch cost.

So if the cost of launching satellites drops significantly it means that satellites themselves can be a lot cheaper. They can be more robust to last longer. The ability to go up and fix them also gets a lot more achievable. It means we can use space a lot more.

Another less obvious benefit is that the since the cost (read financial risk) of putting a satellite goes down the willingness to try new things goes up. Even brand new satellites are sent up with decades old technology because it is proven in a space environment. It would amaze you the archaic circuit boards and computer chips that are used in most satellites because of this. Very far from "space age".

Finally, this means that fulfilling the dreams of going back to the moon to establish a more permanent human presence and going to Mars become achievable like never before. When SpaceX meets their goal of a three hour launch turn around you will see space tourism and moon colonies become a reality.