As the Reusable Launch Vehicle can reduce the launching cost, and
improve the ability of Operationally Responsive Space (ORS), many
aerospace powers in the world consider the Reusable Launch Vehicle
as a main development tendency of space transportation system. Recently,
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), as the spokesman
of private aerospace corporations, has attracted all the world’s
attention to the Reusable Launch Vehicle. SpaceX has been developing
technologies for rockets’ fully and rapid reusability, and
several recovery tests have been conducted on technology-demonstrators
and post-mission controlled-descent tests on Falcon 9 rockets’
first stages, both touchdown on the ocean platform and the land. On
22 December 2015, a Falcon 9 FT rocket of SpaceX, carrying 11 Orbcomm
communications satellites, lifted off from Cape Canaveral. After cutoff
and stage-separation, the Falcon 9's first stage flight back
into the atmosphere and pulled off a powered landing on on Landing
Zone 1, which is about 10 km far away from the Launch Site of SLC-40,
settling to a smooth tail-first touchdown, making it a significant
space “first”. After already celebrated a successful
booster landing, SpaceX had decided to attempt a landing at sea on
this flight despite available margins for a return to land. This decision
was prompted by the need to master the landing sequence for sea-based
recoveries which will be needed for about half of Falcon 9’s
flights when lifting heavy satellites to high-energy orbits. On 8
April 2016, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 FT rocket, carrying CRS-8 Dragon
cargo, lifted off from Cape Canaveral. The Falcon 9’s first
stage has accomplished the first ever successful returning rocket
on the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS). This is considered
a landmark accomplishment on the road to economical interplanetary
and asteroid-to- planet space travel because it enables expensive
launch vehicles to be reused. In this paper, based on the experiments
of Falcon 9, and analyzing the main projects of the Reusable Launch
Vehicle abroad in the past 60 years, the critical technologies will
be researched and the results will provide references for the research
of new type of space transportation systems.