An update from Eric Berger in the wake of the successful third flight of New Shepard. The long setback to reusability caused by the Shuttle is finally coming to an end.

[Update a few minutes later]

I wrote a piece a while ago with this theme, but I may have never published it:

Some people have also questioned whether it’s safe to reuse rockets, but Bezos thinks that perception will flip 180 degrees. “That is an argument that’s been made, but I have a different opinion,” he said. “I would much rather fly in a used 787 than on that 787’s first flight. Let somebody else take that first flight. Look, the fact that you just flew it yesterday means that it’s probably really good to fly right now. And that’s going to be true of rocket vehicles, too. In the future, because of reusability, nobody with a really expensive satellite is going to want to put it on an unused rocket. They’re going to decide that’s too risky. Now that will take a while, but that’s what’s going to happen.”

…”Our first orbital vehicle will not be our last, and it will be the smallest orbital vehicle we will ever build,” Bezos said. And to make it all affordable, says the man who has upended online retailing with Amazon.com, rockets must launch, land, and then fly again. When he’s asked about plans by government agencies and others to build large, expendable rockets, Bezos seems unable to understand that kind of business practice in the 21st century.

“What I know you cannot afford is throwing the hardware away,” he said. “Hardware is so expensive. Look around at the precision you see here. The turbopumps with beautifully machined propellers. It’s just a tragedy to throw all of that away. You can never make a step function change in cost if you’re throwing the hardware away.”

In a couple decades, people will marvel at the stubborn persistence some in throwing expensive hardware away.