https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240410860946/en/Rocket-Lab-Returns-Previously-Flown-Electron-to-Production-Line-in-Preparation-for-First-Reflight

@Mqrius

If this stage successfully passes and is accepted for flight, we’ll consider opportunities for reflying it in the new year.

So not this year I guess

Current status: They just landed a rocket, they're gonna reuse all the engines on it but not the rocket itself. It's expected that they'll go for the structure itself at a later time.

@Mqrius Ok cool. I guess I don't see anything that says they actually think the rocket body could be reused (and the fact that they aren't planning to do so kind of suggests they think it can't be for some reason). I suppose if there were some kind of statement from them that says they think they could reuse this specific rocket body, then I would resolve YES.

@BoltonBailey Nah I think they're not trying to yet with this one, so I don't think it's Yes yet. I assume they're gonna analyze it and see what's necessary to make one waterproof or something.

Does it have to be propulsive landing? Or is landing by parachute or being caught allowed? What if it lands by parachute in the ocean and gets wet but is then reused anyway (Electron)? What if it's reused but only for a suborbital flight, after first being used for an orbital flight? Will the market resolve yes as soon as it has landed, or as soon as it has reflown?

@Mqrius I was originally thinking propulsive, but based on the wording of the criteria, I'll say any method for getting the booster back to the ground intact is fine.

The market will resolve as soon as the landing happens. It does not actually need to be reused, just intact enough to reuse in theory, potentially with refurbishment.

@BoltonBailey Electron has been working on this, and has flown parts of recovered boosters. They're parachuting it into the ocean, but that's not as problematic as they originally thought. They used to try to catch it with a helicopter but they dropped that plan after they found that seawater wasn't too bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab_Electron

"Although the rocket was designed to be expendable, Rocket Lab has recovered the first stage twice and is working towards the capability of reusing the booster."

"One recovered Rutherford engine passed five full-duration hot fire tests and is declared ready to fly again."

So I guess this doesn't yet count as Yes for this market, but they are already recovering boosters with the direction of reuse.

@Mqrius Ok yes, my bad for making a market with criteria that are technically already fulfilled. This market will resolve YES if electron does any launch like this again after market creation date and before close date.

Was that reuse just the engine, or the whole stage?

Actually, I see you said above that they are working toward reusing the stage - so successfully doing that will be good enough.

@BoltonBailey Yeah this will be just one reused engine out of the 9 that are on the first stage, I think they're just testing for surprises at this point. I do believe they're planning to reuse the whole booster but they're not there yet.

@Mqrius Rocketlab are planning to start flying suborbital flights as well. If they fly an orbital flight, and then reuse that booster for a suborbital mission, does that count?

Yeah, I also looked into https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reusable_launch_vehicle and saw that Electron seemed to fulfill the criteria, so I bet YES on the expectation that if another Electron launch and recovery happened successfully that would count.