From the XKCD:<p>&gt; This leads us to the central problem of getting into orbit: Reaching orbital speed takes much more fuel than reaching orbital height. Getting a ship up to 8 km&#x2F;s takes a lot of booster rockets. Reaching orbital speed is hard enough; reaching to orbital speed while carrying enough fuel to slow back down would be completely impractical.[5]<p>Did SpaceX just solve this problem and rendered this paragraph obsolete? Or is that Falcon 9 reached space and turned around without achieving orbital velocity?