Yeah, I still have a newspaper clipping on my wall from Aug 21st, 1993 (San Jose Mercury News) showing it in the take off, hover, and landing stages. I really wanted to work on it then too!
You should read one of Jerry Pournelle's rants on the subject. There was a lot of bitterness from people who supported the program.
The problem with SSTOs, in general is that while getting them to take off and land isn't a big hurdle, getting them into orbit with more than a nontrivial payload is pretty difficult.
It's a concept with its supporters, but there's a pretty large program risk - the numbers are so tight you may get to the end of your development and realize your rocket works but can take only, you know, 25 pounds of payload to LEO. Or maybe a few tons. Or maybe you can't get to orbit at all.
SpaceX's plan to land each stage individually probably makes a lot more sense from the risk perspective.
> Why no other re-usable rocket since 1996 if this
> was doable?
Economics, technology, motivation. All were in short supply in the 90's. One of my favorites was Rotary Rocket. It made great strides but didn't have the right team to get it into production.
1995, DC-X, and it's pyramidal