"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

It's a saying we're sure you've heard before and it certainly applies to science and engineering. Let's take a look at a private spaceflight company, SpaceX. They've been shooting rockets into space to get supplies up to the International Space Station, and while that's a pretty exciting feat, it's not the only thing they've been up to.

See, all that food, equipment, and reading material requires a serious boost to make it up into space. It gets that boost from a booster rocket called the Falcon 9. Yes, we are totally asking for one for our next birthday. Unfortunately, the Falcon 9 itself doesn't get to go to space. Instead it falls back to Earth just a few minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX thought that instead of losing the Falcon 9 in the ocean somewhere and having to make a new one from scratch, it would be cool to have a rocket they could get back and use again. Being the geniuses they are, they decided to make the Falcon 9 capable of landing back on Earth.

If you think parallel parking a car is tricky business, try landing a 67,000-pound rocket traveling about 200 miles per hour on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean. Let's just say SpaceX didn't nail it on the first try. Or the second. Or the third.

That's all part of the scientific process, though. Each time they didn't quite get the result they wanted, they learned something new and were able to make adjustments accordingly. After four failed attempts, and a bunch of tweaks and modifications, SpaceX was finally able to successfully land their rocket on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean. That's about six fewer attempts than it takes us to parallel park our car.

Being able to recycle their rockets is a major step forward in making space flight affordable, so who knows, maybe we'll be able to have our next birthday party on the moon, and we'll have the scientific method to thank for it.