sevenperforce

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect

It's still metric expansion.

The cap attaches to the interstage clamps which are used to hold the S2 tanks. Those engines are pristine.

I'd wager it is much more stable to climb on than it appears. It's just so freaking big. I want to see some closeups of the engines. I don't know whether smacking the water would have done any damage or not. Looks like a big section of the interstage peeled away on impact. Interesting, given that the interstage is carbon composite and thus likely constructed under tension. If they slap another interstage onto that booster and use it for the Max-Q abort test, it would be ridiculously cool. That way, if the rocket fails early...hey, even better!

There is negative pressure. Well, yes, it's counter-intuitive, but dark energy already fits the description of "continuously-created stuff" because energy is mass. So nothing new here. Yes, this is the part that makes me the most concerned. Dark matter distribution is impressively well-understood and well-documented. I am not yet certain whether this theory adequately explains observations of dark matter distribution. I mean, it's a hell of a lot better than MOND, but that's not a high bar.

And you'd have to have "failure of terminal landing burn during burn sequence" to endanger the landing pad. If an engine just craps out mid-burn, then yeah, that's a problem, but that is the definition of failure for every rocket ever.

Yes, and the computer absolutely made the correct choice. No question there. Also, as others have pointed out, engine gimbal was enough to correct the bad pitch and yaw, but it might not have been enough to perform the translation necessary to get over to the ground pad. My point is that even with a critical systems failure in the control fins, the vehicle still landed intact.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have aborted the transition in this case; I'm just saying that the water landing itself was stable enough to have remained upright if it landed on a flat surface.

They didn't realize it was coming down over water at all.

Yeah, grid fins are intentionally not used for any aspect of launch.

I wonder if that is actually ice. It appeared from the video that the grid fin on the left (in the video shown) stalled in a tilted position, causing a roll and yaw preference. The other grid fins worked to try and counteract it but were unable to do so. He is overly optimistic. Then again, it WOULD have landed safely, had it come down on the pad. Maybe a touch hard, but it would have managed. So that's encouraging.

A piece flew off of the booster during coast before entry burn. I saw it float back and clip a grid fin. This is not good for Elon's insistence that powered landings are sustainable for human flight.

Video from the ground will be interesting to see.

Booster started rolling wildly, the grid fins started flipping back and forth, and they cut feed.

Looks like they will lose the booster