I literally applied to work at McDonnell Douglas when I heard about DC-X! It went against my choice to NOT work for a defense contractor, but it was a really cool project. They were amenable to hiring me but a program manager told me in confidence that the project had lost support because the Strategic Defense Initiative's cancellation meant there was no money to continue the project. The demo flights were the last deliverable in the contract and after that the project was dead. It made me sad.

Can't help but recognize the level of awesomeness. For me "deliverable" means a software project, a presentation deck, whatever. These guys delivered a rocket.

Landspace, 10 km — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dNFknayVDU

Deep Blue, several km, hard landing — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-g26Zt15lo

iSpace, 0.3 km — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKCH9ElmmZA

CASC, 12 km — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55iVjGuf_sE (their 75 km attempt in January failed, and doesn't have a public video)

Space Epoch, 2.5 km, hard landing — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTQK1kDpbw4

And the earliest rocket landings would have been the various lunar landers in the 1960s.

Thank you for posting this. DC-X was ground-breaking. Masten also had Xombie in 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01FcUEjwDkk

Northrop Grumman Lunar Landet Challenge was before 2010. Works of e.g. Armadillo Aerospace...