Another rocketry firm experiments with recycling its launchers

AS TECHNOLOGICAL FEATS go, recovering and relaunching the first stage of a space rocket ranks pretty high on the scale of difficulty. So far, only SpaceX, an American giant, has pulled it off. But another outfit now seems close to doing so—albeit on a rather smaller scale. Shortly after the local weather calms (and thus after this story was published), a firm called Rocket Lab plans to dispatch a mission dubbed “There and Back Again”.There and Back Again will start with the lift-off of one of the company’s two-stage Electron launchers from its spaceport on New Zealand’s North Island. (The mission’s name is a sly allusion to New Zealand’s role as a set for Peter Jackson’s filmed version of “The Hobbit”, the original book of which bore the phrase as part of its subtitle.) Minutes later, the attempt to recover the Electron’s spent first stage will begin. SpaceX, which first did this sort of thing in 2015, uses thrusters to set the descending first stages of its Falcon 9 launch vehicles gently upright on a landing pad. Rocket Lab, by contrast, will employ a helicopter to try to catch its parachuting first stage in flight.