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My only question is, is the real time telemetry at a high enough resolution that the exact cause of the explosion can be ferreted out? I'm guessing yes. This is another very important learning experience. One of countless thousands on the way to reliable space launch and recovery.

My only pessimistic thought in all this is that companies like Space X simply do not have the funds necessary to keep absorbing catastrophic loss and will just give up.

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SpaceX at this point is pretty well-funded, still in a solid position to tap capital markets and has a healthy manifest of paying customer launches. There's probably some insurance in place to mitigate financial losses. And this is the benefit of bringing costs down, especially with the complete complete re-use SpaceX is targeting.

Reminds me of that article about the Sony Aibo dogs ending their mechanical end of life. After 16 years, they are failing and they're no replacement parts.

Point being, if Sony had kept going with that incredibly sophisticated robotics tech (for the time) they would be an industry leader right now at a time when robotics is about to explode. Did Sony run out of funds? No. They abandoned the project because of fear for stockholder repercussions. That's what I meant by that comment. Sometimes stockholder flash back is enough to abandon a really great idea.

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