Or you know... maintaining a high bandwidth satellite link on a barge in the ocean with three rocket engines pounding down on it is difficult and not particularly high priority. They have never not shared footage afterwards, and we've got footage all the way down live once or twice (not with a three engine landing burn mind you, since this is the first time they tried that).

The man in charge of this (/u/bencredible on reddit) has also explicitly stated that it's not intentional.

It's always been the dodgiest landings that "accidentally" lose video coverage for the longest. I don't believe this explanation, even if it's the official account. No big criticism though; I'm super happy that they do the launch webcasts. Super exciting to watch.

The barge are in the middle of the ocean and need a satellite link to communicate. Satellite antennas need good alignment and it's logical that the worst landings would also be the ones which perturbate the alignment the most, causing the longest video feed loss. There's an explanation that does not involve nefarious intent.

> It's always been the dodgiest landings that "accidentally" lose video coverage for the longest.

A dodgy SpaceX landing means a) ship and b) three engine burn.

The ship feeds have always been sensitive to vibration - they've cut out every single time - and three engines makes significantly more vibration.

You can conspiracy theorize if you want, but it's a bit like complaining that there are more photos of the outside of the White House than the inside of the President's secret bunker.

>It's always been the dodgiest landings that "accidentally" lose video coverage for the longest.

Maybe you haven't seen some of the earlier ones that had RUD. Take this[1] one for instance from the SpaceX channel. Looks like they stopped using helicopters to stream the landing. Makes sense, because once you have all the kinks worked out, you no longer need redundant instrumentation.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhMSzC1crr0

Edit: Adding a successful one[2]. See how the rocket comes in, pointing away from the barge and then straightens up.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYmQQn_ZSys

In those cases the helicopter recording is by NASA since those are CRS flights. The commercial customers don't particularly care about the landing (apart from cost reductions), or at least not that much, and SpaceX themselves only have the barge and support ships out on the ocean.

Exactly!

It does look like there's a "PR filter" in the video stream and it kicks in when the landing looks iff-ish.

This makes perfect sense too if you think about it. If they were to crash yesterday and there were a video cap to go with it, it would've been all over news in no time. But with no visuals the news like this are far less likely to be reported, leave alone to go viral.

Let me see if I understand - you think SpaceX will refuse to release footage of failed landings?

No, you don't understand.

It's not about withholding the footage, it's about releasing it in a controlled fashion.

This is tinfoil hat nonsense. The feed goes out for a couple of seconds due to the vibrations caused by the incoming 10-story booster retropropulsing its way to the deck. It always comes back after the rocket has shutdown.

And whenever they launch a NASA payload, they get the extra telemetry and video support which allows videos like this:

https://youtu.be/1sJlFzUQVmY

Try keeping a solid satellite connection while holding your dish in your hands.

Now do it on a boat, trying to compensate for waves and exhaust gases from a 27.4 tonne rocket.