The biggest failure was the delay in the flight termination system working. If it had sailed towards the town they might not have been able to terminate it in time.
I would probably add the damage to the launch pad to the list. That seemed to add unnecessary delay to the next launch though I don’t know if it was the long pole or not.
That was part of it, but the engine failures that immediately caused a loss of trajectory (it was visibly off even before it cleared the pad) were most likely the worst problem.
The engine failures didn’t cause the rocket to deviate significantly from its planned trajectory. The biggest failure was a fire causing the flight control system to lose communications with the engines, at which point the rocket was out of control.
Not entirely. It reached about 70 km where the booster had to detach, and it failed to detach. Also, there were several apparent engine failures which did not crash the booster, but very certainly were not nominal operation.
> Also, there were several apparent engine failures
It's pretty clear they were expecting this, as the status graphic had the capability to show on telemetry which of the engines had flamed out in real time.
No, it failed almost immediately off the launch pad when the engines started malfunctioning and it started out on a wrong trajectory even off the launch pad. The detachment was never attempted, and the decision not to attempt detaching was taken as soon as the safe trajectory was missed.
Additionally, the self-destruct mechanism also failed, though thankfully it produced enough damage to allow the rocket to naturally explode later.
>according to the expectations set before the launch
None of those were set expectations for a successful test. Why are people this resistant to understanding it was the very first test of a completely new and revolutionary rocket.
