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Eh, I do think the dumb flak was worse with this one, possibly only because it got wider press than previous launches, but that itself might be due to tribal concerns, with Musk generally having more eyes on him. I've been sort of following SpaceX for years, and I definitely saw more dumb stuff about the recent test than any previous one.

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While I tend to agree I think even those in the know were in shock about the amount of damage to the pad. And subsequent disclosure by musk that control was lost at ~30s is also rather shocking compared expectations of an issue occurring later at stage separation or reentry.

Oh, sure, there are real reasons to be worried about the launch, but it took a stupid amount of time for the peanut gallery to say anything more sensical than "rocket go boom, haha fail", which is definitely not a real reason. I still think the failure of the FTS is by far the most important problem.

I don't know where you get your information but from my perspective the peanut gallery noticed the failure of the flight termination system earlier than the non peanut gallery.

Interesting. Maybe I live in a weird bubble, but the "lol fail" types I saw didn't appear to notice it until much later. Scott Manley was the first I saw talking about it (and he says he got a lot of pushback on that, even).

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