https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/for-the-first-time-in-more-than-three-years-spacex-misses-a-booster-landing/
The fleet leader has met its demise.
It is impressive that the landings got so reliable that a failed landing is worth a headline, but the „boring“ successful Falcon9 landing are not. (At least not as the main topic)
Maybe someday a failed landing will be so rare they get NTSB investigations the way an aircraft crash does now.
That's not exactly how it is right now, but it's not far. Hell, the last time a F9 booster went splat, they grounded them for only a couple weeks before it was shown it wasn't a safety-critical issue.
It just stands out because there's only two flying reusable boosters right now (and only one that can go to orbit). Meanwhile, grounding one model of aircraft doesn't usually have that much of an impact because they are so many active. What'll be really cool is when there are so many reusable boosters out there that one can be grounded and spaceflights will just continue on another.
One can only hope. For our descendants a trip to the moon might be just as routine as a transatlantic flight is today.
Unless our ability to cram delta-V into a spacecraft goes way beyond what seems possible now with chemical rockets, a trip to the moon is always gonna involve a few days of coasting through space. That’s always going to take more preparation than a transatlantic flight.
Let's go with "as routine as a cruise", then. We just need a good space elevator, orbital ring, skyhook...