SpaceX - so close...
 

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Lift-off, is at 1:48:10 ..

dang..

Exactly.

What I don't understand is why thy don't program in a contingency landing site. --a nice big body of water right there.

An emergency parachute system would have been a good option to carry as well.

a minor miscalculation?

This is what happens if your torque wrench isn't calibrated on the third Tuesday after a harvest moon.


just kidding. Looks like an actuator linkage broke (popped loose? lost pressure?) on one of the nozzles. It flamed out.. then another. Only one remaining, but still impressive effort.

https://youtu.be/ap-BkkrRg-o?t=6592

Apparently header tank lost methane pressure so engines had oxygen rich combustion so they started burning up metal liner...thus yellow flame...

Engine rich combustion.

Landed a little hard with only one engine...
What was the successful mission supposed to be like? Vertical landing with 3 engines?

As Maxwell Smart used to say "Chief, I was THAT close..."

That should buff out.

Musk had said he believed the chance of a complete success was 1 in 3. He was right as it turns out.

The missiles ability to alter its' orientation was impressive.

I watched with no audio, so I may have missed some good information. I noticed a few times during the initial flight what looked like a directional thruster shooting to the right from about the middle of the device where the white stripe is, including around the time that the second thruster went out. Then after the last thruster shut off you could see not only that middle thruster going but also 2 or 3 at the time of the device. It was a cool video, and impressive even though it wasn't quite 100% successful.

The Space-X stuff is extremely impressive. I know that for my parents, men in space, men on the moon and the space shuttle were extremely impressive. For me the Space Shuttle, I know now, was, but I guess because I was a kid it just seemed only natural.

For me, the most impressive stuff has been what Space-X has done like the graceful landings of the boosters and then the video that we just saw.

Space is hard. Asymmetric thrust and not enough thrust to slow the descent, makes for a cool explosion.

The landing reminded me of Robin Williams skit on the Mars Lander.

Oops, I did the calculations in feet, but I programmed it in meters.

they put it on it's side for aero braking to slow down, modulated the fins for a glide path.

Watched live (after the cancellations), blowed up real good.

Yeager could have landed that :)

Dramatic.

There were a lot more attitude corrections from the main engines than what I thought it would have required.

Otherwise it looked like it went pretty smooth right up until they used the header tanks. This is why it is called testing.

This is basically 95% win. The hard part worked! Unproven engines, unproven aerodynamic surface, unproven "flip" maneuver... it all worked!

Yes, they need to check why the header tank started bubbling but hey: it was right there! On the dot! 5 sec of fuel and it would have landed!

Very good point and exactly right, this is why you test. Often times you can learn more from a failure than a success.