The last, endless frontier of human exploration has been in a standstill since 1969. Since then, man has made no giant leaps beyond the moon even though all other technology has skyrocketed in efficiency, versatility, and effect. Why have we never gone to Mars, which before seemed like such a reachable goal? There is no chance for a return journey–not yet.

Since the first ventures into the great beyond every space organization, public and private, has simply discarded their used rockets in the oceans to be destroyed as they fall back to earth upon the completion of their mission. An enormous percentage of the cost of a space mission goes into building the rocket, the cost of the fuel is practically insignificant compared. SpaceX, a private launch company under the visionary leadership of Elon Musk, looks to change that and bring our rockets back to be reused again and again, only requiring new fuel.

To do this, SpaceX has been working on landing their rockets right side up; they have had success on smaller experimental scales. So far, they have had two real attempts to accomplish this extraordinary feat, but both have failed. The actual launches and deployments of the payloads for these rockets went seamlessly, but the landings were even more complicated. Surprisingly, it’s not just rocket science. It is much harder.

The first attempt nearly worked, but at the last second, the rocket ran out of hydraulic fluid, lost stability, and crash landed on the drone platform deployed in the Atlantic Ocean to catch it. The second attempt was hindered by massive waves and SpaceX decided to abort instead of risk damaging the platform.

Nevertheless, SpaceX has made incredible progress in this field, and are clearly the only entity to really attempt to make steps to explore the universe as we never have before. The mission statement of SpaceX has always been to establish a human colony on Mars, and reusability is a necessity for this. Virgin Galactic, Boeing, and others are mere commercialized enterprises content to make money, but SpaceX and Elon Musk will make a lasting impact on society that will eventually change our collective capability forever.