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Comment by world2vec | Hacker News Reader

Falcon 9 booster landings became such a normal event that it's only news when it fails. Meanwhile every other rocket provider just tosses their booster in the ocean. (Edit: Rocket Lab does recover it from the ocean, using a parachute)

In any case, SpaceX was on a streak for so long but these past few months they got a failure (-ish?) on their second stage and now this. With so many launches every week it's bound to happen sometime, I guess.

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> Falcon 9 booster landings became such a normal event that it's only news when it fails.

A bit like the airplane industry they are trying to copy -- make these things routine....

Yeah, though it's a little weird that two failures should happen in relatively short order.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. But they definitely want to be alert, because a third time would suggest that something else is going on. Perhaps a slip in manufacturing standards.

I wouldn't get too worked up, given that 23 launches is utterly unprecedented. Still, it's odd.

Is it really weird that two very overworked boosters fail after they both get overworked around the same time? The only odd thing is that they have multiple very overworked boosters.

The first failure wasn’t an overworked booster, it was a second stage which are always new off of the factory floor as they aren’t recovered.

The two failures aren’t related though if I’m not mistaken. This is an issue on a first stage on landing while the other was an issue on a second stage engine.

I think it’s just a weird coincidence. But they’re also launching so often that it was bound to happen.

I think they also had some 200+ consecutive successful landings which is wildly impressive.

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