Honestly I was more surprised how not-vigorous it was. It seems to clear the vehicle by one booster-length after about 3/4 of a second, which would put it about 5-6 gees; for comparison, most Space-Race-era escape systems hovered around the 20 gee range.
Space-Race era humans in spacecraft were test-pilots, who could take 20G for a few seconds. They were trained. This rocket is carrying pudgy passengers who are not trained, and won't take 20G without dying. It's totally understandable they designed it this way -- enough to be safe, not enough to accidentally kill your paying passengers.
If you are referring to the capsule, the dust cloud it kicks up when it lands is from a set of retro rockets firing to soften the landing, not from smacking the ground hard. The Soyuz descent module does the same thing.
Gotta stop at Walmart on the way home!
If only Jeff B had purchased the Booster via Amazon, he could return the damaged product and get a refund or replacement. I wonder if he has Prime?
There were several experimental packages in the capsule, some were even from NASA, go figure. Unfortunately, the apogee of this flight, even with the escape system, was only around 34 or 35 thousand feet -- not much higher than a jet plane's cruising altitude, so, none of those experiments even made it close to space.
