4 ms·
They had to get a lot of things right on the first try for a successful landing. They got a lot of them right, but had trouble with fuel pressure at the end an
by elihu 6y ago
They had to get a lot of things right on the first try for a successful landing. They got a lot of them right, but had trouble with fuel pressure at the end and landed too hard because there wasn't enough thrust.
As problems go, that's a relatively simple one that they ought to be able to address. The ascent appears to have been successful (though for a few moments it looked like something caught on fire and I'm not sure if that was planned or expected). The glide worked. The rocket was able to navigate to the landing pad.
Next time they'll be working with a lot more information. This seems like overall it was a success, even though they're down one rocket and three engines. A failure would have been the rocket blowing up on the pad during launch or other similar mishap from which they wouldn't have learned much aside from "make sure that doesn't happen again".
- fastball 6y agoThe fire after first engine cutoff was just extra gases from the cutoff engine getting trapped and burning off.