[jumploops]

As a software engineer, this might sound like a failure, but launching plus 30s of flight time means a lot of things went right.

If you’re curious about commercial launch vehicles, there’s a decent documentary about the challenges these aerospace startups face called Wild Wild Space[0].

Just getting the thing off the ground is a huge milestone. I wish them the best in future launches.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Wild_Space

[senko]

The book the show is based on / related to, When heavens went on sale (by Ashlee Vance) is well worth a read, as are Liftoff and Reentry (by Eric Berger).

[ivan_gammel]

Looks like it was completely successful. They willingly terminated the launch after achieving mission goals.

[olex]

"Completely successful" would've been reaching orbit. They didn't expect to get that far, but this was still a far cry from a complete success. Only milestones cleared are countdown, launch, and stable flight in fixed attitude - which still leaves a lot of big ones on the way to orbit (controlled pitchover, max-Q, stage sep, second stage ignition and operation, payload fairing separation, orbital insertion, payload separation at the very least).

[ivan_gammel]

That would be “wildly beyond expectations”. If some project achieves 100% of the goals, that is complete success by definition. They did it.

[impossiblefork]

Tilting the rocket didn't work as intended though, so something did go seriously wrong.

[iSnow]

The rocket started oscillating before. I believe it was pure coincidence that the launch termination system kicked in when they started the pitchover manoeuvre.

[impossiblefork]

Yes. I didn't really notice that, but now that you mention it it's very clear.