China's first orbital booster landing attempt

[anovikov]

Looks a lot worse than first American attempts ~11 years ago, those were near misses from get go.

[nkoren]

Eh, they got further than New Glenn did on its first attempt, and it succeeded on its second. They obviously made it through re-entry / retropropulsion in one piece and with a stable attitude, which is an achievement in itself. Looks like an engine exploded at the start of the braking burn -- or in any case, they suddenly start combusting a whole lot of stuff that isn't methane. But that might just be a single point failure, and a whole lot had to go right for them to get this far. It's reasonable that they could succeed on their next attempt.