I made a version of this market where the rocket has to actually be re-used, not just intended to be re-used: https://manifold.markets/A/when-will-a-nonspacex-successfully

Close date is Dec 31, 3025. Given that 2025 is inclusive, I think there's a good chance that either New Glenn will stick the landing, or Electron will make a "we're gonna reuse one" decision. I also think that with a full year to go, Blue Origin may have enough time to make a second landing attempt if the first fails.

I may be betting it a little too high, but I'm feeling bullish.

@DanHomerick Rocket Lab has already gotten Electron boosters from orbital launches back intact, but presumably their method doesn’t count for this market, since they succeeded several years before the market was created. I think your bet is plausible based just on New Glenn though.

@sesquipedalianThaumaturge as I understand it, Rocket Lab's reuse would count, but it has to be "refurb -> refly" rather than pulling off the engines and reusing them on a new booster, which is what they've decided to do so far.

@DanHomerick The criteria specifically say that the booster doesn’t need to be reflown, just recovered intact enough to reuse in theory.

@sesquipedalianThaumaturge yup. So if Rocket Lab were to announce, "We've decided to refly this booster" then the market would resolve YES immediately. They have yet to say that, though...

@sesquipedalianThaumaturge My interpretation of "It does not actually need to be reused, just intact enough to reuse in theory, potentially with refurbishment" is that a lot might ride on just how optimistic the post-recovery press release is. My best guess is that the space of "we could refurb and refly, but it's cheaper / better to scrap it and maybe reuse some components on the new booster" is actually a pretty narrow window. My current guess is that only SpaceX is hardware-rich enough to hit that window.

But who knows, maybe a New Glenn first flight with successful recovery would accomplish that. My understanding is that the engines are unlikely to change much in the near term (so they might well get reused), but that the first vehicle as a whole is dramatically under their performance targets (so they might not see much value in flying it after the initial test flight).

I don't think Electron is in that same position. But RocketLab has been pretty consistent of late that all their reuse efforts are focused on Neutron, so overall I mostly think this question is about New Glenn.

@EvanDaniel I had been assuming that recovering a booster that’s designed to be reused without major damage would be sufficient, because it seems weird for the resolution to depend on exactly how much information a company chooses to disclose about their estimate of a booster’s condition. I think the window you mention is actually pretty large, because of reliability concerns. The Electron boosters Rocket Lab has recovered probably could be reflown if they really wanted to, the issue is that they don’t know how much the stress of flight increases the failure chance of various components, so they’d have to do tons of refurbishment to get a decent expectation of mission success. @BoltonBailey, can you clarify your intent with the resolution criteria?

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.