In southeastern Arizona, a flat desert grassland is being mulled over as a likely landing location for a new reusable spacecraft. A public meeting is being planned by Boeing representatives on November 13 at the Willcox Community Center to talk about the Starliner spacecraft probably landing in the Willcox Playa region. This area, around 65 Mi east of Tucson, is winter habitation for thousands of migrant sandhill cranes.

Moreover, other potential landing locations consist of Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Edwards Air Force Base in California, and White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Recently, on November 11, Boeing announced of the successful trial at White Sands of the emergency abort system for the Starliner capsule, a craft it is building to soar astronauts to the ISS (International Space Station), although only 2 of the 3 key parachutes set out. The capsule is slated for a test flight to the orbiting space station next month with some cargo and a dummy on the craft.

On a similar note, a reusable rocket booster was flown for the 4th time by SpaceX, a landmark in space vehicle reusability. Sixty spacecraft were lifted-off by the rocket to extend the orbital broadband network of the firm. The space company of Elon Musk is lifting off thousands of satellites for a system dubbed Starlink that he anticipates will contend with earthly internet providers to provide broadband connections to customers. This launch implies that Musk is running one of the biggest spacecraft fleets at present in orbit, with around 177 satellites revolving around the planet.

SpaceX is not the only company attempting to develop a massive satellite internet system, but it is the sole company that also fabricates reusable rockets. That benefit enables it to progress rapidly compared to rivals such as Telesat that is still discussing who will fabricate its spacecraft or OneWeb that just postponed a liftoff until January.