Oh, I didn’t mean trivial to land a rocket. I meant that 5500 kg vs 5300 kg sounds so trivial. I understand that there is a line somewhere, and apparently it is between 5300 and 5500, but when I weigh over half that difference it just feels so small, haha.
I totally get that and feel the same way 
So close yet so far
Ariane 5 was built with the need to launch the Hermes shuttle, hence why it is such a heavy lifter - and why it is the safest launcher, as it was meant to be human-rated. But then as very few satellites now are so heavy, they have to rely on this weird contraption to launch two satellites at once.
Launching only one per flight wouldn’t be competitive even with reuse, as reuse wouldn’t cut the launch by more than half. And to launch so many rockets, they would also probably need to expand their launchpad facilities by quite a lot.
What they are going for with Ariane 6 is a lighter launcher (also to replace the Soyuz medium launch) and, recently, a cluster of light, cheaper engines instead of the big expensive Ariane 5 one. Which is a good idea, as smaller engines are easier to build and you can make economies of scale - if your engines are absolutely safe. That’s what Antares used with those superb Soviet engines made for the N1, but as we’ve seen, just one engine failure doom the entire rocket, multiplying the need for safety by many times.
Airbus is working on a system to bring the engines back, but it doesn’t seem to be a priority.
What I don’t get is why they don’t go for continuous detonation engines for those new engines. Airbus and MBDA (the ones making the new small engines) were already working on those ten years ago, and it should be cheaper, simpler, lighter, more versatile and more efficient (though possibly louder, but who cares about that for an already ~200 dB rocket?) I guess the tech is still too young to be used in production in the near-future…
Unfortunately, info on continuous wave detonation engines and their current status seems difficult to find.
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That was my point about doubling the amount of Arianne 5 launches. It doesn’t cut the costs in half but it will make it cheaper on a per rocket basis. I know it’s completely infeasible but the possibility is there which is why I specified a similarly designed rocket. Falcon 9 had more lift capacity to LEO and similar to GTO, but it chooses to take a payload hit and launch 1 at a time so they can land. Falcon 9 was built with this in mind, and so can Arianne 6 if ariannespace wants to stay competitive in a decade.
I’ve never heard of continuous detonation so I’ve got some research to do on it - thanks for bringing it up.
From what I have been told, that this decision was made for fuel reserves mostly. This is launching to supersynchronous orbit which takes more energy. The current limit is approx 5300-5400kg to GTO, and at 5500 kg it went over that limit for landing.
In regards to continuous detonation, I believe the group that killed Concorde killed that idea, if I recall correctly.
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Alrighty fellas it’s time for the big one. As it stands now the next spacex launch is 1 week from today, Mar 29th, (don’t know the time right now) launching SES 10 to GTO. There will be a barge landing attempt.
What makes this launch so awesome is that it will be the first launch to reuse a landed stage 1 core. This core was first launched and landed on a barge during the crs 8 mission delivering dragon to the ISS. Exciting stuff!
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Launch slipped a day. Current window: 2017-03-30 : 1800 – 2030 EDT
Current weather forecast says 70% chance for a launch on thursday.
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The used one? I gotta see this 
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Noooo… 
( /jk )
I’m really looking forward to it too, I hope they can land it too! First twice flown booster would be even better than “just” a successful launch.
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2 hours until launch. Super excited! Apparently they will also be attempting to recover the fairings that cover the payload which has never been done before. They’ll attach steerable parachutes and attitude control systems to steer them down. Their original plan called for the fairings to be caught mid air by helicopters but I have a feeling they may be trying a proof of concept and just “gracefully” crash land onto the ocean.
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It doesen’t say “experimental landing” anymore in the progress meter below. Just “landing”.
1 minute. 
So far so good. Just wanna see that successful landing.
Edit: Landed! The age of reusable rockets has arrived!
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Nailed it.
Nice little speech from Elon to mark this milestone.
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March 30, 2017.
I’ll remember this day forever. The day they reused it, finally!
I’m kind of surprised that more people aren’t… going nuts about this. Like, do they realize what this actually means? It means we just entered a new era.
Like Jesus Christ. It’s like people got so hypnotized by the landings that they didn’t realize what they were actually for.
This is it. We can do so many new things. The concept has been proven. This should mean it’s time to start shifting over to reusable rocketry.
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All this hype and no video.
Congrats SpaceX!
There is a long way to go, but I’m super hyped for the Falcon Heavy now.
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I have to echo Alkan here. This is as huge as Apollo 11 but just not quite as flashy (for most people). It’s the first step to open up our solar system and it’s exciting. We lived through history yesterday.
This was the last piece of the puzzle for falcon heavy. It can now launch huge payloads to Leo, Geo, and beyond without throwing away 70% of the rocket. It’s huge cost saver for not only local missions but any interplanetary destinations that it’s capable of reaching.
Also yay.
At MECO and when it landed I stuck my hands in the air and went “wooo!” for a few seconds Then sat back down and carried on playing KSP.
Yes its an important milestone and great achievement, but I am a male introverted engineer - I’m not going to ‘go nuts about it’ 
I sure hope not, Apollo 11 led to a few years of science and prestige before being pretty much written off as the Space Race came to a close. Sure, the scientific and technological fallout was kind of great, but the main element was left to waste away.
Now NASA is twenty years to the Moon and counting (up, not down, like commercial fusion).
If things go well, this should actually have a lasting effect on opening space.
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Us introverted people tend to go crazy over the internet though!
I can’t wait to see Falcon Heavy launch this year. If they can recover all three stages on that… Jesus.
Though, of course, I’m most eager to see the ITS. What a monstrosity of a rocket.
Beyond that, I’m a 55-year-old male introverted engineer. So I have years of experience watching stuff like this, and my resulting attitude is quite cynical. Not towards SpaceX, which is an amazing bunch of engineers and technicians whose abilities I applaud with enthusiasm, but towards the society that they operate in, and what that society will do with the promise of affordable access to space.
Somebody will undoubtedly want to turn the moon into a billboard, a la Hancock.
Hear, hear. This is more like the invention of the farmer’s combine. Or perhaps the cotton gin. It is an enabling technology that will impact people’s lives indirectly, but fundamentally.
It’ll probably more directly impact me, more or less, 40 years down the line, if I move to Mars. Lol.
We’ll see how far they get with that, of course, but this is possibly the biggest step in that goal, which is why what they’ve accomplished is nothing short of incredible.
I mean, we now have reusable rocket technology, and big rocket technology. We just need to combine the two now, and the most difficult step was demonstrating that it can be done to something .