How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster

SpaceX · 31.2M views · 2017-09-14 · 2:09

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Overview

SpaceX's own compilation of failed orbital booster landing attempts, set to sound, showing the crashes before landings succeeded.

On Hacker News

HN uses it as evidence that SpaceX iterated through visible failures and is open and humorous about them.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2018–2026

Topics

Space exploration & spaceflight

What people said

jerf · 2021-02 · Recommendation
If you happen not to have seen it, "How Not To Land an Orbital Rocket Booster": [VIDEO] from SpaceX.
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codeulike · 2020-09 · Recommendation
Everyone is commenting saying how mundane it has become to see the landings. Hence you might enjoy this official SpaceX Blooper reel from 2017 that shows the numerous spectacular failures that they worked through. Innovation is a type of gamble. People forget that. "SpaceX: How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster" [VIDEO] (and regular reminder that these things are 12-storey high explosive tubes)
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Medox · 2018-02 · Recommendation
Speaking of not being ashamed of failures, I've always liked their compilation of them (with sound it's even better): [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by SpaceX, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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