First-stage retrieval

Chemical rockets take multiple "boosters" to get into decently high orbits. They are then let go to be space junk or, in that first stage, burning meteors. Dangerous and wasteful. Even if you didn't want to reuse that particular booster, you still want to inspect the damage, to improve the next booster. Or just have the scrap.

So to get the booster back, here's Hiller Aircraft from 1965. Rather - there, in Palo Alto, was. But now here's Rocket Lab.

SpaceX already proved that they can get a booster back if they brought extra propellant, to decelerate it after it's done. Rocket Lab figure that if the satellite is sufficiently small; its first booster can be small, and that booster can parachute back. (Nowadays computers are small enough that we got "CubeSats" and the like, not the van-sized satellites of the Reagan era.) The 'Lab would catch the falling booster with a helicopter [sed noli modo].

Saves money: the only propellant it needs is the fuel-propellant to get up there (paraffin / nytrox?). And the booster's landing is safer - to such a degree they can launch it from a US State. The savings on both should be even greater in future if the 'copter is an electric-powered drone perhaps remote controlled. Multiple rockets of this sort should work wonders to supply pieces of a larger LEO satellite, assembled in-orbit. At a LEO factory mayhap.

Parachutes won't work from our Moon and probably not from Mars, neither. I'm unconvinced Titan for first-stage even wants boosters, rather than ramjets. But Rocket Lab will work from Venus.

BACKDATED: I found out h/t Reynolds but the article is from 4 November when nobody was paying attention.

MORE TO THE POINT: The test is 15 November. This isn't the helicopter-retrieval test, yet. This is the fish-it-out-of-the-Pacific test. h/t Reynolds a couple days late again.

IT WORKED 11/22: The booster was retrieved. From the ocean, so unsure if reusable. Still. Well done!

SOLAR 11/23: Here's what it can do - send solar-cells to a polar-orbiting LEO power station, for assembly up there. Won't work from our Moon though.