[Bobalu]

The whole deal is an embedded systems problem.

Believe me. This is a complicated problem...when they work it out it will shave mucho $$$ from the cost of a space launch.

It is ROCKET SCIENCE after all....

[LS]

Yep. I was project historian for the National Aerospace Plane program, 1988-1995 (wrote the official history called "The Quest for the Orbital Jet," (http://www.amazon.com/Hypersonic-Revolution-Studies-History-Technology/dp/1478146176/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429481235&sr=1-2&keywords=ThE+Quest+for+the+orbital+jet)

Anyway, it was amazing to watch the difficulties of solving so many of these problems. One rationale for building the X-30 was that, like Obamacare, to know how to test it we had to build it. There were no wind tunnels for Mach 15-20, so really except for computer models, the only way they could get real data was to build stuff and test it.

[robert14]

I do not understand how this will save any money. Swapping payload weight for return fuel weight does not help the launch vehicle company make a profit. “We got our first stage back safely but we were not able to put enough payload into orbit to make a profit.” That is why the traditional launch vehicle companies do not try to save their boosters.