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this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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What you said is correct except that they went into it ignoring the lessons of the past. NASA had done tons of testing and knew that the launch pad wouldn't survive half the Starship's thrust and designed a launch pad that worked. Space X instead chose to believe that a special concrete would be enough. The new launch pad is missing a flame diverter and will likely be the failure of the next vehicle. The iterative approach doesn't work if you can't get a launch clearance from the FAA due to a lack of trust.
Pretty sure they actually did successfully do a half thrust test and it was acceptable.
I'm like 80% sure it was at least half.
They had no idea how bad it would fail given that test.
Edit ya there it is, half thrust. https://www.axios.com/2023/04/28/faa-spacex-starship-investigation-explosive-test-flight
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649800747834392580
I recall something about the engineers in SpaceX wanting to follow NASA's lesson and Elon basically telling them "trust me, we don't need that".
Well, all things considered, Musk is still part of what made SpaceX exist. Real world may work in obscure ways.
It's only that he didn't make it happen via his (non-existing) genius. He made it via his deep pockets and ego.
I don't think you fully got the meaning of my comment. Other than that, Musk's deep pockets were shallow at some point.
They already did a static fire with the new deluge system and it seems to work just fine.
The FAA has continued to trust SpaceX and issue licenses as they address issues. Keep in mind the FAA issues launch licenses for each of the hundreds of Falcon 9s they've launched so far, has issued more launch licenses for them than for any other company ever, and has a long working relationship at this point.
Iterative design isn't really a problem and we wouldn't have reusable rockets at this point without it.
They static fired at half the thrust available again. There were no issues when they did that last time as well.