Originally Posted by
sailingfun
Wasn't that the expensive important one?
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Yes. But due to significantly higher loads on the center Falcon 9, there are no plans to reuse them. They wanted to recover it to do post-flight forensic testing, but it used more fuel than predicted in the ascent* and there was insufficient fuel remaining for the final braking burn to the drone ship so they made a last second decision and ditched it at sea right beside the drone ship.
* The roadster ended up in a much, much higher orbit than initially discussed. Maybe there was an issue with the merlin vacuum engine not shutting down as scheduled thus using more fuel?
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