The problem with this argument, when talking about space, is that precedent is often so extremely conservative and over-engineered that there's likely to be a huge middle ground between "good enough" and what NASA did in the 60s.

NASA built a launch pad with a flame diverter and water quenching system - and it worked! But now they have it, they're unlikely to test launches without it. Space X clearly think that there's a middle ground - something which is simpler, quicker and cheaper than the status quo, but which is good enough.

Clearly they failed - and arguably they were irresponsible not to do more tests. Given the environmental repercussions of failing, they probably should have started with something closer to precedent and worked iteratively to simplify it. But when you're talking about this sort of very low volume system (how many launch pads, total, are there in the world?), precedent is only worth so much. (It's also the reason so little progress was made in re-usable launchers until SpaceX came along).

Hardware is not software - I completely agree. But you can only make progress by testing hardware. Assumptions are rarely correct.

Yup, apparently the pad at 39A was overdesigned too (for larger rockets than were launched from it).

Engineering is all about finding the tolerances. It's a difficult line to walk.

Broadly speaking, any individual or organisation working in a regulated industry is directly incentivised to either maintain the current status quo of conservatism, or increase it further.

Maintaining existing conservative approaches brings a huge amount of 'CYA' with little direct downside. Trying to even slightly roll back from a conservative position places all of the risk on the individual or individuals responsible, with a huge downside versus a small incremental upside that few will likely appreciate. It's mostly a thankless endeavour

I see this regularly in a different industry (with FDA, EMA) and it's what SpaceX are dealing with here. While I'm not arguing that their decision to launch with the existing stage 0 was correct, their decision to do something differently has introduced that much larger downside - further delays and potential censure from the FAA, and opprobrium from commentators and internet forums alike.

The alternative is the SLS, how many billions down the drain is that?

The true issue with the launch was the flight termination system taking 15-30s to trigger, which they have had to requalify since that is what protects the public from harm.

Down the drain? The money has been used to pay people's labor and sourcing materials. That was demand attended to by highly sophisticated supply chains. SLS isn't some stone monument in the desert. It's a huge engineering undertaking.

Yes, a huge portion of the money was down the drain because of the significant waste. It enabled bloated, inefficient companies to stay alive supporting this one massive project.

SLS could have been done differently. Instead it was loaded with political favors demanding specific parts/suppliers.

We can only know what was a dead end, waste or bloat in a complex systems pathways in retrospect. I would prefer for humanity's sake to see more avenues of technological advancement pursued rather then only those conforming to some(one's) definition of efficient/correct. SpaceX might be construed to be blowing private investment in some guy's grand vision of space exploration that might turn out to be simply vain. Time will tell. Deriding people exploring the edge of human progress because they don't fit with your values is presumptuous.

Cost and value are different things.

Someone's cost is another's value. Money didn't get burned. It moved along in the economy. It moving in ways you disapprove of is no basis to call it wrong. Unless you wanna parse the whole economy and veto things you don't agree with. Let me know how that turns out.

The government can only spend so much money without things breaking down. When some of that money goes to bloat, that is waste. Despite it still being in the economy. And it's not about some kind of personal approval factor. If the government pays 2x what it could have paid for the same level of quality, that's entirely objective.

If you're being objective with numerical measurements, care to provide source?

Bloat = waste, that is just circular logic. You're defining what you want to call waste as a synonym of waste. Nasa gets a budget and spend it on space missions, propulsion technology and launch vehicles. That money employs engineers and scientists and generates demand for high specs engineering firms and supply chains. The bang for the buck is this impact on the economy, stimulating education, R&D etc. Not the rocket that fits your definition of efficiency. Having more then one actively used propulsion vehicle with different technological approaches is a national investment in resilience.

Calling it bloat and inefficient because it takes more money per launch then another 100% experimental and unproven platform is incredibly myopic.

I do not have a source for the generic example number.

If you want sources for government spending too much on things, those exist all over.

> Calling it bloat and inefficient because it takes more money per launch then another 100% experimental and unproven platform is incredibly myopic.

No, that's not what people are saying. The problem is that the main companies NASA contracts to are running in an extremely inefficient way and they get paid more when they waste money.

This is a problem that would exist even if SpaceX never became a company.

> That money employs engineers and scientists and generates demand for high specs engineering firms and supply chains. The bang for the buck is this impact on the economy, stimulating education, R&D etc.

The problem is the dollars that aren't going to engineering and R&D.

Dollars that just stimulate the economy are bloat when they're going to some big company out of a budget that's supposed to be doing things like exploring space. If you want to just send out dollars to stimulate the economy, send them out to people with low incomes and they'll have a much bigger impact.

So you're just inventing numbers and making baseless claims? Got it. Stop wasting my time

I think it was abundantly clear that "If the government pays 2x" was a generic hypothetical number.

Thank you for ignoring 95% of my post with that useless rejection.

Have you looked at what SpaceX promised NASA for HLS? They need to be able to launch it and rapidly refuel it with 13 tankers. They’ve already spent a few billion, by the time they can reliably launch 13 refueling tankers in rapid succession and not destroy their stage 0, we could be taking $10-15 billion in dev costs putting Starship firmly in SLS territory.

Although if all goes well they'll still have all the future starships and engines afterwards. And a system that doesn't cost 100x as much to launch.

And yet, the SLS has flied one successful mission and put something in lunar orbit without a hitch, while Starship failed in so many ways:

- it destroyed its pad

- it went off course as soon as it left the pad

- 8 out of 33 engines failed - one of which immediately after firing (causing it to go off course)

We'll see what the future brings, but for now its clearly SLS 1 - Starhsip 0. Given the amount of failures in the Starship exepriment, my bet is that we'll see at least 1 more successful SLS launch before the first Starship launch to reach orbit and back.

At the same stage in development, SLS also had zero successful launches. So that's not very meaningful.

No, there are options between the two extremes.

Nasa over engineered pad 39A and now they have a pad that can probably launch anything. But SpaceX with stage 0 did absolutely nothing even though most rockets in history used a diverter of some kind. A simpler and cheaper solution is welcome, but ignoring physics and doing nothing is just baffling (especially for the largest rocket ever). Even RocketLab with their tiny Electron have a diverter. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/P_tGKxL6CLI?t=31

The Titan submarine was manned; errors resulted in lost lives.

No one was killed or even injured in the Starship test flight.

They are not comparable levels of "irresponsible".

Flame diverters are heavy, and none exist on Mars. It's safer to gather as much of that data as possible before going to Mars.

And the Super Heavy will never go to Mars. Starship might. But how it launches from Mars is entirely speculation. For something like Starship to launch you need plenty of pad infrastructure anyway: fueling, chilling, etc.. If you can build that you can build a diverter no problem.

Also on Mars you need to dig anyway to create any kind of habitable environment due to radiation and you have no issues digging caused by the water table. So digging a diverter on Mars might even be easier then digging one at Boca Chica.