Arianespace exec, in 2013, talking about SpaceX before they managed to land a rocket [1]: "reusability is a dream. [...] SpaceX is selling a dream. [...] The market will wake up and realize it's a dream." the word "dream" appears 3 or 4 more times in that single sentence.
I cannot find a quote, but I also remember distinctly an exec from ULA claiming reusability was a dream, because even if you could land a rocket successfully you would never be able to reuse it as the stress on the rocket from the flight would make it unable to fly again, with any material you can use to build a rocket. (SpaceX has a falcon 9 booster they have reused 17 times so far).
I cannot find a quote, but I also remember distinctly an exec from ULA claiming reusability was a dream, because even if you could land a rocket successfully you would never be able to reuse it as the stress on the rocket from the flight would make it unable to fly again, with any material you can use to build a rocket. (SpaceX has a falcon 9 booster they have reused 17 times so far).
[1]: around 3:00 https://web.archive.org/web/20210723155930oe_/https://r1---s...