The Pixel landing was harder than it looked from here. They reportedly damaged a leg, and started a small fire that fried some electronics. They may be out for the weekend, unless they can do some cannibalizing of their other vehicle.

[Update a few minutes later]

John did an interview on the big screen, in which he noted what they had accomplished with a few hundred thousand dollars and eight people working part time, in a few months. "NASA and its contractors should be ashamed of how much their efforts cost."

Sadly, they have no shame, at least when it comes to that. Their number one product is jobs.

Why would they need to cannibalize Texel to repair Pixel? It seems to me they could just fly Texel instead.

Ah, Carmack said it's because the rules prevent him from flying his level 2 vehicle in the level 1 challenge.

NASA people have pride at the low levels. At the White Sands tour we met NASA chief smeller, their clean room people, their engine stressing people, their oxidation safety analyzing team, their impact analysis team and more. Each has an important contribution, yet in total they result in a very heavy organization that does not achieve the unwise safety level that they seek and validates Rand's conclusion that NASA is just a jobs score board for legislators and ceases to have any worthy worthwhile goals.

It's not just a factor of NASA. Most organisations which do "safety critical" work, be it engineering or software, have to have enormous overheads in process and procedure in order to meet mandated standards.

At some point it will come for private space. Where Rand is right to protest is that if they try and impose that too early in the game it will kill any chance of doing this at sensible costs.

Generally speaking customers like that level of Project Management overhead. They like to know that they can trace a faulty bit of wiring or a problem to an individual engineer on a Tuesday afternoon years before. I have friends who used to build fighter aircraft who have a few bad night's sleep every time they hear that a fighter has gone down. It's part of the culture for that type of project and you can't keep away from it forever.