Sure, it was cool to see, but it was inevitable that someone would do it. Once Dean Kamen demonstrated self-balancing wheelchairs and Segways, anyone paying attention could foresee subsequent applications such as self-landing boosters.

There are a lot of smart people in the world who, with the same backing that Musk received, could lead a company to achieve those goals. Without spreading themselves so thin that they make mistakes affecting thousands of people. Our tendency to elevate and idolize people who are aggressive and self-promoting leaves little room for those blessed by the absence of those traits.

It's ridiculous that on a day when thousands face unemployment that there are excited stories about flamethrowers being shipped.

Recovering a booster for reuse, something the Space Shuttle program did literally hundreds of times? That gave you shivers? Really?

Shuttle booster 'reuse' was a misnomer: they were pretty much completely rebuilt each time, and cost more to rebuild than build from scratch. See: https://www.quora.com/Space-Shuttle-How-much-money-was-saved...

Watch the video of them landing themselves - it was truly unprecedented

Pioneered by the MDC DC-X in the 1990s, with considerably less computing power available.

Space-X have done great work in making landed-recovery practical and reliable but they're again building on top of work originally done by the DoD-contractor model.