Parabolic Arc

One of the many great benefits of this new approach to launch services is that the finger points in only one direction; SpaceX. The buck stops with Elon. And, given Elon’s thought process, this failure is likely being viewed as an OPPORTUNITY for improvement. NASA involvement in this investigation is likely two-fold. One, they want their launch service provider to be perfect and two, they have a huge amount of expertise in failure analysis that could be leveraged by SpaceX. In addition to providing incremental improvement ideas, this failure provided a demonstration of successful orbital insertion even with an engine failure. Pretty darn impressive in my opinion. The whole mission, including the secondary payload, would have been successful if it weren’t for the stringent conditions on a re-ignition imposed by NASA. I am not saying that NASA’s conditions are wrong, just saying that a mission with the primary payload not heading to ISS would likely have had a successful secondary payload orbital insertion since a re-ignition would have likely been allowed. Wish industry had more leaders like Elon to unleash the capabilities of US industry. Society is much too risk adverse which IMHO hinders advancement.

Robert, by serendipity or design, Elon has an engine cluster that through mass fractions allows him to access reusable flight profiles with only a moderate amount of throttle down on landing. Reducing engines makes that capability much more difficult. You need to learn what mass fractions mean for different fuels.
That’s not going to happen without adding much smaller landing engines that would ruin his thrust to weight ratios and greatly reducing his overall payload capacity.

These are concepts that are easily tested with any reasonable flight simulator.