The actual objective was to crash very slowly into the water, and to that end, I believe they planned for about 13 out of 33 to light for the "landing burn". But only about 5 lit up at that time, giving them a higher-speed crash-landing. However, the landing site was exactly where they needed to be, and done in complete safety, so that is good.

They had been explaining the post-ignition abort from last week, and showed how 4 out of 33 engines had failed to light on the first stage. This was due to some kind of pump malfunctions. They said that if 1 or 2 fail, it's OK to launch, but more than 2 is an automatic abort. So they were able to replace the finicky motors and fully test them out.

Who knows what caused the underthrust for the landing burn, but at least all 33 engines were operational at launch, and they got plenty of data from this test run, and all Starlink v3 satellites have been deployed successfully for their "suborbital speedrun", so this test flight is doing really awesome!

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ls612 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Damn so this probably means another identical suborbital flight in 6-8 weeks. It is looking less and less likely that we will see either prop transfer or a ship catch this year.

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davmar 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

i don't think so - the ascent looked good. i don't think they need to put the ship on another suborbital trajectory because the booster landing burn failed. also, i don't think this impacts prop transfer or ship catch - both are separate problems.

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ls612 17 hours ago | parent [-]

I think this is technically true but that they want a seamless suborbital flight (like the last two for the Block 2) before they move forward on those other goals.

	▲	eightysixfour 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Why wouldn’t they only care about seamless ship flights, to get some value out of the launches, while they’re still learning and figuring out how to light booster?

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NetMageSCW 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They don’t have to catch the booster to test any of that.