Why is this a big deal? Up to today, space travel has always been expensive ($40K a pound) since everything was one use. It's like getting on a plane, flying to Paris then scrapping the plane. In the case of space, the rocket could cost $50M to $100M but then it'd be discarded.
This is a game changer since the rocket lands after use and can be refueled for just $200k and in 1 day (!). And this wasn't a test either - the rocket did carry a commercial payload of 53 tonnes and deployed successfully. This opens the door for more space exploration and exploitation.
If I was in the commercial space business, I'd be sweating bullets now since my smaller competitor just found a way to do the same thing for much, much less.






