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While the stage zero stuff was clearly dumb, I don't know if it was "risk to life" dumb given the exclusion zone.

My ignorance permits the possibility that exclusion zone wasn't big enough, for example.

But it did have an exclusion zone, and Musk gave it, what, 50% odds of making it past the launch tower? Or was 50% a different test launch?

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I believe it was acknowledged that the lean of the rocket immediately after launch was unintentional possibly due to the damage of the pad, and later (for possibly unrelated reasons) the thrust vectoring failed completely. Given it took more than 30 seconds for the flight termination to take effect there was definitely non-zero risk there for staff or potentially even the observers a half-dozen miles away.

While the FTS needs improvement, my (limitied) understanding is that its ineffectiveness was due to the fuel tank being almost empty at the time, and while in extremely thin air.

(But this is what I get as an untrained watcher of Scott Manley videos, I'm not a rocket scientist nor a pilot so I assume I only half-understand what he says, and what he says is necessarily a summary or the videos would be x10 longer).

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