Why the SpaceX landing is so important

The launch and return of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket made history on Monday. It was the first time an orbital rocket was safely returned to Earth.

But why is this so important?

READ MORE: Did Blue Origin beat SpaceX in landing a reusable rocket?

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has daring visions of space exploration. While he sees the colonization of Mars as an eventuality, he is practical: he recognizes the challenges that exist, and, in his entrepreneurial spirit, seeks to face them head on.

There are various steps to space exploration, and Musk seems to be going through them. His first task was to build a cheap rocket. And he’s done that successfully. While other rockets — such as United Launch Alliance and Orbital Sciences —  cost around $225 million a launch — according to SpaceX, its costs per launch for a Falcon 9 is about $61.2 million (though some have challenged that number). However, the Falcon 9 has a limited launch capacity. So that leads to the next step: a bigger rocket.

SpaceX has plans for a Falcon 9 Heavy that will increase the payload by about double (it depends if it’s in low-Earth orbit or farther) . Though it was scheduled to launch in 2015, SpaceX has pushed it to 2016. Once completed, it will be the most powerful rocket in the world.

WATCH: SpaceX makes history after launching, landing first stage of rocket

But building rockets and sending them up in space only to have them burn up upon re-entry isn’t exactly cost-effective. And this has been Musk’s objective: to build reusable rockets that will further reduce the costs of spaceflight.

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“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred,” Musk has said. “A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.”

There are other private enterprises seeking to reach the same end. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and head of Blue Origin, a privately-funded aerospace company, landed its New Shepard rocket back on Earth at the end of November.

It’s interesting to see the competitiveness between Bezos and Musk. After Musk gave a backward compliment to Bezos following the landing of New Shepard, Bezos returned the sentiment on Monday.

Either way, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. And in the end, it’s supposed to benefit us all, making spaceflight cheaper and more accessible. But then again, the “space race” of the 1960s painted a future of solar system exploration, space stations where we would spend our vacations and colonies on the moon and Mars.

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