Holy Hanna!!
They successfully launched and Re-LANDED the FIRST STAGE!!!
History made yesterday...
Forget Star Wars, this is the real deal.

Great video Dan. Stuff like this is the reason I don't get things in the shop done.

thx for posting this...quite a feat!

(start @ 31:00 for the landing segment)

One of the commentators makes the analogy of the feat being like throwing a pencil over the Empire State Bldg., having it bounce back and land upright on a shoebox!
I'd have added '...and planning it to happen exactly that way'.

and keep me up at night...

My first real job was in a blueprint shop at North American Aviation where they were building the Apollo and its service module. My brother worked there and went on to be an engineer at JPL. He did all of that with a slide rule. NAA (later Rockwell) had an early mini computer there with roughly the power of a $5 calculator, that was the size of a large desk. Slide rules were really about making very close approximations, literally close enough for government work.

If you ever get the chance to go tour Cape Canaveral in Florida, do so. It is amazing to see the unbelievable size of the Saturn, and how simple the control room was compared to today. If you watch the control center at Jet Propulsion Labs when they land a probe, its all laptops! Progress.

Or at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama where they also have one of just about everything that has ever been shot into space. I still have my slide rule and still can use it a bit. It was a neat video to watch.

We had a Saturn stage at the front gate of the Michoud (NASA) Facility in New Orleans. You can't appreciate the sheer size of the rocket until you stand next to it.

It is really amazing that they were able to land this assembly. They have had nothing but failure up until now, so, kudos for being the first to do this.

This will pave the way for cheaper and reusable space vehicles. The last External Tank that we delivered cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $54,000,000 (yes, 54M), and it was disposable.

Dan that's a very cool video nice to watch. N

This was Space X last shot at accomplishing this feat...just about out of money, just about out of time. They pulled it off, and pulled it off with flying colors.. now NASA is about to give them a billion and a half contract....

it pays to dream big sometimes....