https://v.idtech.space/videos/watch/3b04ca86-dc74-4299-9c32-aa10855672de This was version 1.1 of the small lander, which was still controlled by the cheap Gyration gyros that had severe problems with shocks, so the computer was set to kill all thrust if the rate ever went very high. The legs caused enough shake when slowly lifting off the ground that it was hitting the limiter all the time, so the only way to cleanly get it off was to hop it off with a lot of throttle. There was a lot of latency in the remote piloting path due to several factors, so it didn’t react quickly enough to throttle down commands, and when it hit the tether chains, the gyros got jerked, causing the engines to shut off and let it crash back to the ground. I hunted down all the latency sources in the piloting loop before the next flight, and later moving to fiber optic gyros removed the jerk problem completely. Wed, 04 Nov 2026 09:42:37 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://v.idtech.space https://v.idtech.space/lazy-static/avatars/4047fbcc-c7dd-4827-ac50-29fce9a79720.png https://v.idtech.space/videos/watch/3b04ca86-dc74-4299-9c32-aa10855672de All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://v.idtech.space/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.