Could SpaceX learn something from the Shuttle Program?

Good morning. That series of posts on O'Neill's colonies has me thinking. So, I came up with this idea: put wings on a rocket.

Elon Musk of SpaceX wants to make his rockets fully reusable. Why not put some wings on his rockets, and bring them back to the ground in a controlled trajectory? That method has a lot of experience behind it via the Shuttle program. You could splash down, or you could try to land it on a runway.

Splashdown may be simpler.



Update:

You know, this isn't such a wild idea. You have a vehicle in the Shuttle, which landed on a runway, for heavens sake. The concept is proven. Now, what exactly would you have to do in order to make this work with SpaceX's Falcon 9?

You may need to do a major redesign because you would need to add a lot of hardware to the thing. The mass fraction, which doesn't appear to be good, would probably suffer.

Yet, it would seem to be a desirable goal, because, if you could do this, the turnaround could be fast. Both stages are liquid fueled, so that go more quickly than the turnaround for the SRB's and the SSME's of the Orbiters. I heard it said somewhere, that, if the Shuttles main engines were allowed to operate a little less vigorously, it would have helped turnaround times a lot. As far as the SRB's are concerned, they should have all been in one piece. The fact that it was a solid fuel didn't help turnaround times, either.

It may be harder to get the second stage back, but keep in mind that the Shuttle itself returned from space. It can be done, if that is the goal.