SpaceX crash

Slate has an incredible video of the SpaceX rocket not making a landing on its barge:

Phil Plait has a Bad Astronomy article about it:

The 10 January 2015 launch of the Falcon 9 rocket went well, but the attempt to land the first stage booster vertically on a floating platform in the Atlantic didn’t go quite as planned.
Amazingly, the booster slowed, found the barge, and was able to target it for landing (all autonomously, mind you). But then something went wrong at the last moment; the fins used to steer it ran out of hydraulic fluid, the booster tipped at an angle, and the engines couldn’t compensate. It crashed, released fuel, and exploded.
A lot of people are calling this a failure but, as I said in my original post about the landing, it’s more fair to call it a near-success. Most of the procedure to land the booster went nominally, and now the cause of the crash is known. As Elon Musk points out, the next flight will have more of the hydraulic fluid on board, so the fins should continue to work.
Speaking of Musk, I have to hand it to him: he’s a master of PR. His tweets about the crash were good-natured and even funny:

Full RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) event. Ship is fine, minor repairs. Exciting day!

Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly may have to become a new phrase in the lexicon.
I liked his next tweet even better:

Next rocket landing on drone ship in two to three weeks with way more hydraulic fluid. At least it should explode for a different reason. 

This was a serious event, and I have no doubt it’s taken very seriously inside SpaceX. But the public sees this differently, and sees Musk differently, so these tongue-in-cheek tweets put a great spin on the event.
The next scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 is no earlier than 31 January 2015, when it will loft the Deep Space Climate Observatory over a million kilometers from Earth.

Rico says they'll be back, and will hopefully make it next time...