In article om,
says...

On 2016-09-05 10:20, Rob wrote:

With the landing failures it was not so critical. They attempted the
landing, and if it failed the customer's mission objective was still
achieved and they could further tweak the landing system.


To the engineers in charge of landing, they would have been critical
failures. (even though the commercial mission was a success).

Landings are experimental. Failures are expected. But even with a
landing failure, valuable data is gathered which can be used to improve
the chances of future successful landings.

Launches are not supposed to be experimental.

Where failed landing are different is that they do not cause a
hold/delay in launches.

The customer doesn't want their payload to go "boom" (failure) or to be
delivered into a useless orbit (so called partial failure). That's the
important difference. SpaceX has a contractual obligation to the
customer for the launch.

Jeff
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