The success is a giant leap toward the company's goal to take humans and cargo all the way to Mars on the world's biggest and most powerful launch vehicle
The landing pad wasn’t really at risk. If they had hit it it would have been relatively low speed, by the time it was at the catch attempt it was at like 30 km/h or something. Hitting a big steel object at that speed would have probably done more damage to the booster than anything else
/https%3A%2F%2Ftf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ffiler_public%2Fb0%2F27%2Fb0279ed8-dbd3-4933-80eb-fd5f95efe523%2Fscreenshot_2024-10-15_at_120255.png)
The landing pad wasn’t really at risk. If they had hit it it would have been relatively low speed, by the time it was at the catch attempt it was at like 30 km/h or something. Hitting a big steel object at that speed would have probably done more damage to the booster than anything else