SpaceX Mars Prototype Rocket Nails Landing For the First Time, But Explodes On Pad (cnn.com) 129
A SpaceX rocket prototype, known as SN10, soared over South Texas during test flight Wednesday before swooping down to a pinpoint landing near its launch site. Approximately three minutes after landing, however, multiple independent video feeds showed the rocket exploding on its landing pad. CNN reports: SpaceX's SN10, an early prototype of the company's Starship Mars rocket, took off around 5:15 pm CT and climbed about six miles over the coastal landscape, mimicking two previous test flights SpaceX has conducted that ended in an explosive crash. Wednesday marked the first successful landing for a Starship prototype. "We've had a successful soft touch down on the landing pad," SpaceX engineer John Insprucker said during a livestream of the event. "That's capping a beautiful test flight of Starship 10." It was unclear what caused the rocket to explode after landing, and the SpaceX livestream cut out before the conflagration.
He added that SpaceX has several other prototypes already in production and the next, SN11, will be ready to roll out for another test flight 'in the near future." SpaceX's first launch attempt on Wednesday, around 3 pm CT, was aborted at the last tenth of a second. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet that the abort was triggered by pre-set standards around the rocket's thrust, which Musk described as "slightly conservative." He added that the company would increase the rocket's thrust limit, giving the rocket more wiggle room for getting a go-ahead for liftoff. The company then recycled the SN10's fuel ahead of the second, successful attempt.
He added that SpaceX has several other prototypes already in production and the next, SN11, will be ready to roll out for another test flight 'in the near future." SpaceX's first launch attempt on Wednesday, around 3 pm CT, was aborted at the last tenth of a second. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet that the abort was triggered by pre-set standards around the rocket's thrust, which Musk described as "slightly conservative." He added that the company would increase the rocket's thrust limit, giving the rocket more wiggle room for getting a go-ahead for liftoff. The company then recycled the SN10's fuel ahead of the second, successful attempt.
How ? (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess with this logic then those 2 737Max that crashed and killed everyone also had successful landings.
Look at video, it did land (sort of) OK (Score:5, Informative)
It exploded in what world is that a successful landing ?
If you look at the video, it landed, but then sat for several minutes while they attempted to put out a fire... it was only then later on it exploded. So the landing really was successful...
Although really more of a part-success, as it was meant to land on landing legs, but they either didn't deploy or failed (I couldn't tell from the video) so even though it landed and stayed upright, it was just sitting on the base and at a bit of a tilt also, I actually thought it was going to fall over before it exploded. It never even shifted though so it was upright and stable.
But again, watching the video it did indeed end in a landing that someone could have easily walked away from had they been inside.
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did indeed end in a landing that someone could have easily walked away from
Walked? One does not simply walk away from a multi-ton methane tank that is on fire.One triggers the explosive bolts, fires the zipline, and sprints to the nearest concrete blast hole.
I'm thinking Starship could use ejection seats, like on Gemini capsules.
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The hero has to jump (Score:2)
> The hero always walks away for the explosions.
From movies I've learned you have to jump 1/8th second before the explosion. As long as your feet aren't touching the ground when it explodes, you're safe.
Of course the opposite is actually better - lay face down, preferably in a slight depression in the ground.
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It'll be interesting to see the analysis when it came out. Overall the flight was an impressive sequence of high risk moves, involving multiple engine shutdowns and restarts, but I wonder whether the failure to end up on the legs was the result of landing with a little too much velocity, or somehow other jarred the spacecraft causing a methane leak.
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Keep in mind that if this was a real flight there would have been 100 people aboard. So the supposition that one person could easily walk away is only somewhat interesting. Even that one person would be pretty far from safety at the start of those seven minutes, and I'm not even sure if they could really get there (not to mention the people blocking the exit while they get thei
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The rocket did not deploy the landing gear. Which was pretty clear from the commentary :P
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It exploded in what world is that a successful landing ?
If you look at the video, it landed, but then sat for several minutes while they attempted to put out a fire... it was only then later on it exploded. So the landing really was successful...
Looked like it came down pretty hard to me.
(I don't think rockets are supposed to bounce).
Re:Look at video, it did land (sort of) OK (Score:4, Funny)
If you ever want to piss off a commercial airline pilot, the next time you have a bumpy landing, ask the pilot which touchdown he plans to log as the landing as you exit the plane.
Re: P.S. - Didn't exactly explode, unplanned launc (Score:5, Informative)
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The methane tank is on the bottom and the bulkhead gave out or the bottom opened up in some other way.
Looking at it again slower I agree with this, though it's pretty interesting the effect was to actually boost the rocket up and not blow the whole thing apart in a million pieces on the spot. Must not have had much fuel left.
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I thought it had a good cartoon explosion aspect to it.
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The methane tank is in the middle. The LOX tank is at the bottom. It looks like the LOX tank gave way on the underside and that crumpled the methane downcomer, which then dropped methane onto a fire in a pure O2 environment...
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The methane tank is in the middle. The LOX tank is at the bottom. It looks like the LOX tank gave way on the underside and that crumpled the methane downcomer, which then dropped methane onto a fire in a pure O2 environment...
You're right. Would be interesting to see that fire modeled. It didn't seem to be a well oxidized fire when it blew.
Re:P.S. - Didn't exactly explode, unplanned launch (Score:4, Insightful)
an accidental engine ignition (?)
That's not what an engine lighting up looks like. It looks like there was a methane leak and it eventually ignited explosively.
The landing wasn't as soft as they would have liked and it had an obvious lean, like the Tower of Pisa. Mostly the issue with that is that the leg design needs work. It's a difficult problem since making them beefier adds weight. With the booster stage (the thing we saw today is just the top half) they're now talking about trying to catch it so that most of the mass of the mechanism that has to take the shock of landing is on the ground.
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The legs they are using for these belly-flop/flip landing tests are not the final landing legs. This thing may not even have traditional legs, as the plan is to have the strong-back "catch" a landing Starship.
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Oh, yep. That's correct regarding what gets caught. My mistake. The Starship current legs are still just for prototyping. They will change a lot.
Re:P.S. - Didn't exactly explode, unplanned launch (Score:5, Insightful)
An explosion in an enclosed space created a thrust, throwing the rocket into the air.
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That indicates, now, that a fire under the skirt burnt until it weakened the lower bulkhead, which failed, throwing all the remaining liquid methane out.
P.S. - It exactly explode (Score:2)
The EXPLOSION launched it 100ft into the air.
then the engine (or whatever was propelling it) cut out
I'm curious how you could tell what the engine was doing when it was 100ft in the air since it was surrounded by the fireball of the explosion.
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Landing, yes; standing, no (Score:5, Funny)
It's a successful landing because it touched down without incident. What followed however, was an unsuccessful standing.
Re:Landing, yes; standing, no (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a successful landing because it touched down without incident.
No, there was clearly severe damage on landing. SN10 would never have flown again, even without the explosion.
But the test was a huge success in that it got further than last time, and good data was gained. The flaps and rocket engines performed well, a pity about the landing legs?
It took a lot more than 3 tests to get the Falcon-9 booster landings working.
Re:Landing, yes; standing, no (Score:5, Interesting)
The flaps and rocket engines performed well
Well, to be fair, one of the engine plumes was rather green, compared to the others. This is usually means copper is getting into the combustion, which signifies "Engine Rich Combustion."
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Just before touch down two engines were intentionally shut down at the same time for the final touch down. That might have been a miscalculation as the single engine landing was quite hard, presumably resulting in the damage that cau
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Quite so. At this point I suspect the landing is becoming a somewhat bigger part of the test, and I'm sure they'd love to get their hands on an unexploded ship to analyze it for weak/overstressed points, but it's still the flight itself that's the majority of the test.
I've got to say though, seems like there were new issues on both flight and landing - partway up I noticed a greenish tinge to one of the rocket flames - I'm guessing that's probably engine-rich exhaust. And that huge fire that started durin
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On the way up I saw crap flying out of hot end.
Then after looking at a different video of the same thing, I concluded it was mpeg compression artifacts.
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If the surgeon removes the clot, then the patient dies because they hit their head when gurney collapsed on the way back to their room, I'd say that the surgery was successful, though the result as a whole was a failure (assuming you wanted to keep the person alive and it wasn't a clandestine assassination or something).
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Which is exactly what is happening down in Boca Chica. These are rough prototypes. There are lots of places where methane could leak, and with the rocket's skirt pretty much touching the ground when it lands, lots of space for leaked
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These are test rockets. The whole point of them is finding and fixing bugs. No lives are being put at risk. And most importantly, this test showed progress over the last one. As long as they keep making progress, it's fair to call it a success.
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All patients die, eventually. The question is whether, after they're under anesthesia, they wake up dead, or they live longer.
(Yes, this post was meant to be humorous, and no patients were harmed in its production.)
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It exploded in what world is that a successful landing ?
In ISO 9000, where repeatability (SN7 [republicworld.com], SN8 [theguardian.com], SN9 [cnbc.com]) is the goal.
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In the world of rocketry there are many very successful tests that end in explosions, that is par for the course.
Unless a failure prevents engine ignition and launch any failure, no matter what it is, ends in an explosion (or a catastrophic break-up with or without an explosion) -- because there is no other option.
Eventually they work the bugs out and the system stops exploding, and you start having highly reliable launches.
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That may be true, but its hardly objective or honest to say it nailed the landing if it exploded. A nailed landing is one where the ship is still in its unexploded form.
The rocket did land in an unexploded state. (Score:2)
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It was on the landing pad for about 10 minutes, I'd called that a successful landing. The explosion wasn't directly related to the landing.
Except for one side of the bottom getting crushed and being on fire as a result of the landing. I'm guessing there was a transitive dependency between that and the later pop.
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Maybe watch the video before making a disgusting comparison like that? And, yes, it landed successfully and then ~ 3 mins later it exploded. These things are prototypes and are being rapidly produced to test a novel rentry-landing idea while simultaneously testing new engine designs and new methods of manufacturing. Any number of interrelated and unrelated issues can occur in any one of these test flights. It didn't explode on landing, it didn't explode in flight and crash, it didn't crash and then explode.
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It exploded in what world is that a successful landing ?
I guess with this logic then those 2 737Max that crashed and killed everyone also had successful landings.
He upped his game from the last attempt. That's all that counts.
The mission accomplished all of the stated objectives. But they really need to work on that post-game profile!
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In food eating contests, if you barf, you lose, even if you ate the most the fastest.
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A fifty dollar note is a 50 or its not. A 5 isnt a 50.
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It exploded in what world is that a successful landing ?
In the same world where parking successfully, but then having your car catch fire is a successful parking job. That very thing actually did happen to the father of a friend of mine years back. He parked in a restaurant parking lot, went inside, then found out that his engine was on fire. It burned a very close to circular hole through the hood. Despite all that, the car undeniably parked without issue.
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Someone always get trampled in that situation.
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- - - - >
P. T. Barnum [ptbarnum.org]
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Record for fastest rocket turnaround? (Score:4, Funny)
The folks at nasaspaceflight.com had the best description:
"Starship SN10 landed on the landing zone; then burned off the excess propellant in a rapid fashion." :)
Definite Improvements (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like they've made some good improvements to their control system software. I noticed that the flaps don't seem to jitter around as much as they did on the first flight, so they've likely been able to turn down the gain on the control loop now that they have more confidence about the vehicle's flight characteristics. Similarly the crazy fast gimbaling of the engines as each is shutdown doesn't occur anymore - gimbaling is much smoother. Overall it looked very clean.
It was a bit surprising that it landed so hard (relatively speaking) that it bounced. It appears that some of the landing legs didn't lock in place, so perhaps it wouldn't have done that if it had hit the crush cores. But they have already landed prototypes from that sort of hover, so it does seem to have touched down a little bit on the fast side.
As for the RUD, I'd say it's pretty clear something got damaged during the ground impact due to failure of the landing legs, so overall a pretty good test. To be honest, I doubt anyone put much effort into the landing legs - if it got to the point of them being used the test was an astounding success anyway.
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Launched Twice! (Score:5, Funny)
Nice to see SpaceX launch their starship twice for the first time! They even nailed the belly flop maneuver for both of them. The second landing looked a little hard so probably want to make some tweaks for that
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This is the 3rd high altitude Starship flight. SN8 and SN9 did the bellyflop but exploded on impact. SN10 hung around a little longer before exploding.
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3rd and 4th test, though I guess the 4th test wouldn't qualify as "high altitude"
Regardless of final ending, this is audacious (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to tip your hat off to SpaceX team. It really doesn't come across on a computer monitor or a TV screen but the Starship is really huge. It's 50m (160') tall and empty weighs 60 tonnes (120k lbs) - basically the same as taking 27 53' semi trailers arranged as a three high stack of 9 trailers in a square.
Think about that mass of 27 semi-trailers and what was done to it - the launch followed by putting everything on it's side and dropping it and, just before it hits the ground, torque the whole thing vertically again and drop it down, gently.
Obviously there are still a few issues to work out. Rewatching the video, I'm pretty sure some parts came off during ascent and not all the landing legs deployed before landing. Along with that, there was a sensor failure during this afternoon's first launch attempt that SpaceX apparently shrugged off and launched anyway and just about made it.
If it was shown in a MCU movie, it would be dismissed as CGI and, probably, bad writing.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Regardless of final ending, this is audacious (Score:2)
Yeah I have to confess I actually had to watch that segment again because I thought it was a simulation that they cut in to show how it was *supposed* to look.
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Yeah - one thing that occurred to me is that I heard on one of the previous flights that the flip happens 1km above the ground - which sounds pretty decent until you realize Starship is so big that that's only 20 ship-lengths.
I don't care how reliable the engines are, that's a serious anal-pucker maneuver right there. Can you imagine sitting in a passenger model for that landing? You can't see anything but sky as you fall, until suddenly the engines kick on and shove you into your chair as it flips partia
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You have to build it in such a way as it can't fail. By that I mean the system continues to try its best rather than shut down in the event of seemingly catastrophic sensor readings.
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So the exact opposite of what the Boeing 737 MAX was programmed to do.
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That is why the seat in front of you has that funny paper bag on its back side.
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You're supposed to shove it up your ass to relive the pucker? :-D I don't think fear works that way - you've just added really awkward paper cuts to an already unpleasant situation....
Yeah, it might be nauseating too - but only for a few seconds. If you're that sensitive to motion sickness then you're probably already running on empty from your time in freefall.
Its even more impressive than that (Score:2)
You'd think balancing something on its base using engines would be complex but no more so than say balancing a segway - problem is you've still got liquid sloshing around inside it which complicates things enormously so I imagine there has to be near millisecond feedback to the engine gimbals or its toast. Literally.
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If it was shown in a MCU movie, it would be dismissed as CGI and, probably, bad writing.
Very bad writing. It was clear they were struggling for filler material to fill the 12min gap between landing and explosion. They should get Michael Bay in on this. Land the rocket, someone comes up and says something racist as a joke, quick cut to a gratuitous shot of an arse in short shorts, and then BOOM but in extreme slow motion, followed by people looking off into the distance while the camera pans around them. THAT is how you make movies! None of this 12min of science exposition.
4 out of 10. Conclusi
How is this Different? (Score:5, Funny)
Back when I was flying Cessnas in the 80-90s, we used to say "any landing you could walk away from was a good one". Did someone move the goalposts?
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if you were walking away from this thing after it landed, and not running like an Olympic champion, you'd be medium-well done.
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Nah. If you jumped out on landing and ran like hell you would get past the blast zone radius. In any case, it was a twofer. They took off twice and landed twice, all for the price of a single rocket.
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if you were walking away from this thing after it landed, and not running like an Olympic champion, you'd be medium-well done.
There was over eight minutes between landing and re-launch.
It's a lot different (Score:2)
1. The rocket is 160' tall. Being generous, you would have to climb down at least 100' from the crew cabin. How far did you have to climb down from the Cessna cockpit?
2. The rocket was bent on landing and would have a pressurized cabin. If the door was jammed on the Starship, what would you do? They're going to be at least 3mm thick stainless steel - put another way, could you kick your way through a jammed B737 door? With the Cessna, no problem kicking a door out.
3. In the Starship, the oxidize
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None of the items you listed contradicts the point of what constitutes a good landing. It has nothing to do with the shape or size of the craft..the same phrase was used by military and commercial pilots.
This is R&D, not production. (Score:2)
Here, not only would they have got much of the data back from the radio links, everything else would be in non-volatile storage in a heat- and shock-resistant package somewhere up in the nose, and there is nothing in this explosion that would put that storage at risk.
They've got there data, the engineers will be happy. AND they got their big boom too, which is always fun.
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I did enough R&D during my 37 years in engineering to know that this also qualifies as a new priority 1 discrepancy. You don't get to deliver until those are cleared up. But yeah, I would have enjoyed the big boom too.
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This is not an operational vehicle, it is a test article. It's meaningless to talk about "discrepancies", most of the systems required for flight exist only in very early and basic forms, and many required for actual operation don't exist at all yet. There's a near-identical one already on its way to the pad because they expect to lose them in testing...rocket flight involves narrow margins and a great many things that can result in loss of a vehicle. They actually planned for several more, they scrapped SN
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You make it sound like they have nothing to investigate, and will just leave this mishap without any additional changes. If you think it's meaningless, you're sadly mistaken.
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What do you expect an investigation to show?
"These placeholder legs aren't very good."? You need an investigation for that?
"It landed a bit hard." And one of the main reasons for doing the test flight was to gather data to refine the landing parameters. They got that data.
Again, this is a test article. Much of the stuff on there is the minimum sufficient to support the tests, and will be replaced with something actually intended for regular operation in some future prototype. They only care that it does its
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Back when I was flying Cessnas in the 80-90s, we used to say "any landing you could walk away from was a good one". Did someone move the goalposts?
To be fair Cessnas don't typically just explode after landing. So the goal posts here is that any landing you can walk way from in slow motion while putting on your sunglasses is a good one.
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Joe Stack: "Hold my beer"
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Took 6 minutes to blow. So you could walk, although I would recommend swiftly jogging in this instance.
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Dr. Jones, Sr.: "I didn't know you could fly!"
Dr. Jones, Jr: "Fly, yes; land, no."
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Funny. What most people don't realize is that you can learn to take off and fly around in one easy lesson. Landings are another matter entirely...especially with crosswinds.
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There seems to be some dispute. Many sites claim it was a Yeager original.
SN10 pre-launch events speaks volumes (Score:4, Insightful)
SN10 launched a couple of hours AFTER an aborted launch attempt where SN10's engines actually started.
Could or would NASA do that? I'm laughing too.
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T
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It didn't sound like much of a risk to me. The original light produced an out of spec, slightly high, thrust value so it shut down. Elon tweeted something along the lines of the test was being run with very conservative parameters, they looked it over, and they upped the limit. Reset and go again.
AFAIK they're actually working to increase Raptor's max thrust so seeing one run a little hotter than expected probably isn't too unexpected.
Space Force (Score:2)
When I first read this I though for sure it was a preview of Space Force S2E1
"Mars Prototype Rocket"? (Score:2)
Mars prototype?? Did SpaceX acquire Magrathea, and it just didn't make the news?
Study Wrong (Score:2)
Its better to have things go wrong so you can study what went wrong, then to have things go right only later to find out they were wrong.
Re: I've been cyber-crippled. (Score:2)
Seek help.
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Well, I mean with everybody else landing and reusing rockets this is a bit stale... no?