A two-stage rocket is more than twice as complex, with many failure modes, so I keep an eye out for these ones.
This was a “heads up” flight as announced by the LCO. The upper stage needs to be ignited at the proper moment by the on-board computer. It’s a nail biting moment as the crowd looks overhead and sees the booster fall away, chanting light, light….long pause…oh no… it’s slowing down and arching over… “don’t light; don’t light”… a sophisticated flight computer won’t make that mistake, and so we just have a heavy lawn dart coming in overhead. But meanwhile, a separate problem has happened with the booster – it is also coming in hot, but is not as heavy since the propellant has burned.
Visually, I really liked the car tracks leading off to the distant hills, peacefully shimmering in the morning mirage.
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