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Is this the re-usable launch vehicle, i.e. the one that re-enters the atmosphere and lands itself upright?



Essentially yes. They won't be able to reuse this particular vehicle, but it will return and hover over the ocean for them to retrieve. They'll recover it and study the results to make the next one even better. Real reusability is probably at least a year away.


SpaceX only has one launcher at present, the difference between re-use and expendable use is a matter of how that hardware is used, not how it's built. Every Falcon 9 v1.1 launch to date has made use of the same, fundamentally reusable first stage core. To actually reuse the core requires bolting on some additional hardware (which has flown on 2 flights already) such as landing legs and then flying the stage back to land. In software terms this is like hiding new functionality behind a "feature flag" so that you can let the code bake in production for a while.


Yes, the first stage has landing legs. They're planning to deploy the landing legs over water and attempt to hover the booster just before it hits the surface.




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