What a Rocket Startup That Helped Create the ‘New Space’ Wave Leaves Behind

DC-X was the first rocket to land on its tail, in the nineties. In the 2000s Armadillo Aerospace, Masten and Unreasonable Rocket all changed what we thought was possible in rocketry.

Then came SpaceX hopper and finally reusable Falcon 9. Falcon flights are not as routine as Masten rockets yet, as some of Masten's rockets made over two hundred flights. Of course performance is in a different league also.

But the operations part is absolutely necessary to dramatically reduce the cost of access to space. It's probably the least sexy of all things. Designing the vehicle for operations. For example, in some cases trading away performance for more robustness. Designing the operations themselves, creating the automation and efficient processes, safety, personnel etc. Masten clearly did something quite right there.

Very sad to see them go. As a kid I always wanted to fly something on their (long since discontinued) $100 cansat program: https://spaceref.com/press-release/new-service-offers-payloa...

Just one example of how they wanted to do things differently.