[Waverunner]

In the 1960's a proposal for a steel skinned rocket was put forth as the lowest cost per pound to orbit space vehicle possible, Project Sea Dragon . It was a super heavy booster and one of it's features was an outer skin of 5/16 (8mm) steel and would be built in a shipyard. A stacked Saturn V would have fit into it's first stage. It's nickname was big dumb booster, because it didn't require any new technology. And it was planned that the first stage was reusable. TRW conducted a project review for NASA, and it was feasible in 1962! But funding was cut as Gemini/Apollo rising costs killed programs like it and Dyna Soar.

[Viking2002]

I always thought the Dyna-Soar had some potential. And the Saturn-Shuttle was a good one. But the whole concept went to pot when an M2-F2 took a header, and it cost us $6 mil to rebuild the pilot into a Borg. 😉

[Mr. K]

It was originally planned to land the first stages but it was apparently just too hard....
Plus the first rule of government spending why buy one when you can buy two at twice the price.

[PIF]