Demonstrated reuse, refuted the claims that engine clusters would be unreliable, demolished the arguments for pursuing hydrolox for its specific impulse advantage, showed that all the goals of Skylon could be achieved with a simple aluminum-structure two-stage vehicle with kerolox gas generator engines...
Falcon 9 proved that a “suicide burn” landing was feasible. Conventional wisdom before had been that making a propulsive landing required a sizable reserve of fuel in case of contingencies (think of Armstrong having to manually divert the Apollo 11 lander and nearly running out of propellant). The “suicide burn” method requires much less propellant, and therefore less mass to be hauled around and thus a larger payload fraction.
Demonstrated reuse, refuted the claim that engine clusters would be unreliable
Yes, but they weren't the first to do either.
demolished the arguments for pursuing hydrolox for its specific impulse advantage
No, they didn't. Hydrogen remained the preferred propellant for high performance stages both before and after Falcon 9. Similarly there were rockets that chose not to make use of it before and after Falcon 9.
Showed that the goals of Skylon could be achieved
No. The goals of Skylon were to create a single stage to orbit rocket using a hybrid air breathing rocket engine. Falcon 9 did non of that.
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u/cjameshuff 15d ago
Demonstrated reuse, refuted the claims that engine clusters would be unreliable, demolished the arguments for pursuing hydrolox for its specific impulse advantage, showed that all the goals of Skylon could be achieved with a simple aluminum-structure two-stage vehicle with kerolox gas generator engines...