Making a reusable rocket system is not something that NASA has been doing EVER let alone for 50 or 60 years. We could get into other innovations, but to keep it simple, your statements either come from a lack of knowledge or an intentional downplaying.
en.wikipedia.org
USAF and NACA had been studying orbital reusable spaceplanes since 1958, e.g.
Dyna-Soar, but the first reusable stages did not fly until the advent of the US
Space Shuttle in 1981.
20th century[edit]
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McDonnell Douglas DC-X used vertical takeoff and vertical landing
Perhaps the first reusable launch vehicles were the ones conceptualized and studied by
Wernher von Braun from 1948 until 1956. The
Von Braun Ferry Rocket underwent two revisions: once in 1952 and again in 1956. They would have landed using parachutes.
[13][14]
The
General Dynamics Nexus was proposed in the 1960s as a fully reusable successor to the Saturn V rocket, having the capacity of transporting up to 450–910 t (990,000–2,000,000 lb) to orbit.
[15][16] See also
Sea Dragon, and
Douglas SASSTO.
The
BAC Mustard was studied starting in 1964. It would have comprised three identical spaceplanes strapped together and arranged in two stages. During ascent the two outer spaceplanes, which formed the first stage, would detach and glide back individually to earth. It was canceled after the last study of the design in 1967 due to a lack of funds for development.
[17]
NASA started the
Space Shuttle design process in 1968, with the vision of creating a fully reusable
spaceplane using a crewed
fly-back booster. This concept proved expensive and complex, therefore the design was scaled back to reusable
solid rocket boosters and an expendable
external tank.
[18][19]The Shuttle was more expensive to operate over its 30-year lifetime than an expendable launch system would have been.[
citation needed]
In 1986 President
Ronald Reagan called for an air-breathing
scramjet National Aerospace Plane (NASP)/
X-30. The project failed due to technical issues and was canceled in 1993.
[20]
In the late 1980s a fully reusable version of the
Energia rocket, the Energia II, was proposed. Its boosters and core would have had the capability of landing separately on a runway.
[21]
In the 1990s the
McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper VTOL SSTO proposal progressed to the testing phase. The
DC-X prototype demonstrated rapid turnaround time and automatic computer control.
In mid-1990, British research evolved an earlier
HOTOL design into the far more promising
Skylon design, which remains in development.
The commercial ventures,
Rocketplane Kistler and
Rotary Rocket, attempted to build reusable privately developed rockets before going bankrupt.[
citation needed]
NASA proposed reusable concepts to replace the Shuttle technology, to be demonstrated under the
X-33 and
X-34 programs, which were both cancelled in the early 2000s due to rising costs and technical issues.
