Cited on HN 4 times, 2012–2021, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN uses it as evidence of SpaceX's early full-reusability concept.
A SpaceX concept animation of a Falcon 9 and Dragon launch with powered vertical return of both stages and the capsule. It was uploaded to YouTube in 2011.
Not done by spacex, they made this vid to demonstration the idea - [this video] I dont know of any ship that has the ability to land like that, except for craft in development like from blue origins - [link] I believe the Soyuz uses rockets to slow its decent before it hits the ground, but thats to assist the parachute rather than replace them.
Their website has been changed quite a bit and old linked videos are hard to find. I found a copy uploaded to YouTube in 2011 : [this video] Edit: Found the original copy on the Web Archive [link]
It certainly was at the start. [this video] Apparently they are no longer pursuing stage 2 reuse on the Falcon 9. The next gen superheavy lift rocket, the BFR, is intended to be fully reusable though.
I feel fairly certain that Blue Origin has plans for second stage reuse. Whether these plans have gone much past the napkin phase is another question. SpaceX mocked up a plan to reuse the second stage of Falcon 9. [this video] These plans were scrapped to concentrate on Starship. If the Falcon 9 is big enough to have enough margin to support second stage reuse, New Glenn definitely does too.
SpaceX's scrapped Falcon 9 second stage reuse mockup
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
4 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.