[masraum]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Well, not if you consider the thing was also meant to be reusable. If it got >300’ then fell in the ocean intact enough to reuse: success!

I don’t know if that was a consideration in calculating what a success would be. It seems flushing $3b to get a rocket 300’ in the air doan make no sense.

But then again you're not a rocket surgeon. (And neither am I).

It could have been that the RUD was intentional. The main rocket had run out of LOX which probably meant that the thing was going to start working it's way down in an uncontrolled manner. I assume you don't want a very large, intact rocket coming down in a random spot that could cause issues for people under it or that would be difficult/impossible to recover.

How many of the other rockets crashed or exploded when landing before they got that to work consistently?