>> I think it's amazing achievement for the very first attempt.
I completely agree. I was just confused by the term "hard landing" and the effectiveness of the grid fins at low speed. It didn't make complete sense to me. As for my "stupid mistake" comment, I guess running out of fluid is also as simple as it gets if that's all that went wrong, and they are owning up to that.
That said, this is only a "first attempt" at putting it all together. I had fairly high confidence in them. Remember, they hovered and landed in Texas. Their first controlled re-entry failed, the second made it to the sea with onboad camera, the third was seen hovering at low speed from a plane. They had no reason to think this wouldn't work - which is not the same as having high confidence that it will work ;-) Putting it all together often leads to interesting things...
I'm still impressed and look forward to the next one.
I completely agree. I was just confused by the term "hard landing" and the effectiveness of the grid fins at low speed. It didn't make complete sense to me. As for my "stupid mistake" comment, I guess running out of fluid is also as simple as it gets if that's all that went wrong, and they are owning up to that.
That said, this is only a "first attempt" at putting it all together. I had fairly high confidence in them. Remember, they hovered and landed in Texas. Their first controlled re-entry failed, the second made it to the sea with onboad camera, the third was seen hovering at low speed from a plane. They had no reason to think this wouldn't work - which is not the same as having high confidence that it will work ;-) Putting it all together often leads to interesting things...
I'm still impressed and look forward to the next one.