I missed the first flight, but it was successful. The second one was beautiful right up until the end, when the burn seemed to end prematurely, and the vehicle reportedly fell over on landing. It was difficult to see, because it was obscured by all the dust kicked up from the long hover. More pics in a few minutes.

[A few minutes later]

The above is the long shot from which the top picture was digitally zoomed (I took it with an 18x optical lens, 504mm equivalent).

Below is a picture of all the dust being kicked up during the hover.

They flew beautifully for the whole flight, but got back above the landing pad early (the flight has to be at least ninety seconds long). They were hovering for what seemed like almost half a minute. The announcer stated that they were hovering close to the ground so that if anything went wrong at the end, it wouldn’t have far to fall.

I’ve no idea what happened, so this is pure speculation. Perhaps they’re not used to flying in the dirt, and didn’t anticipate how much dust would be kicked up. If something in that cloud affected vehicle systems, it will be kind of ironic that in attempting to play it safe, they may have accidentally doomed the attempt at almost the last second.

In any event, John will have something to say shortly. All the money is still on the table. He gets two more tries tomorrow.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Wired (for whom a couple of stringers are sitting across from me) is covering it as well.

[Update at 3:45 MDT]

Clark has more, as does Jeff Foust, Alan Boyle and Leonard David.

[Update a little after four]

Alan Boyle told me that he talked to Neil Milburn, so this is second barstool down, but the prevailing theory seems to be that they had the same problem on the second flight as they did this morning–a restricted fuel line due to contamination. This morning it resulted in a failure to ignite. This afternoon, it resulted in a LOX-rich burn at a higher-than-normal temperature, which apparently cracked the combustion chamber a few seconds before the end of the flight. If so, so much for my “dust theory” above.

They have spare parts, so they can repair overnight and go for it again in the morning. I assume that part of the overnight maintenance will include a complete dismantling and cleansing of the propellant lines…

[Evening update]

You can probably find more details at other places, but my understanding is that they actually had a hard start (that’s a rocket engineering euphemism for “had an explosion in the combustion chamber at ignition”) on the return flight, and they were surprised that it lasted as long as it did, because it was apparently shedding parts through the whole flight. That would explain why they wanted to complete the trip so quickly and then just hover above the pad and hope that they could stay aloft for the full ninety seconds. They came pretty close.

Better luck on the morrow, with a rebuilt vehicle.

Off now to a Space Frontier Foundation reception at the Ramada in Las Cruces.