Re:Was Starship’s Stage Zero a Bad Pad?
by XorNot on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:53AM
(#36598094)
You're completely missing the point: if the rocket fired up its engines and immediately went off course from the pad, they would have to trigger the flight termination system at ground level which would cause the near fully loaded to rocket to explode on the pad.
If an area of a launch site is so valuable as to not be allowed to ever be at risk of mishap from the rocket launch, then the launch site should not be there.
However, the launch site is there and has already passed review for launch operations from that location. The occurrence of a launch failure or damage to the site does not suddenly mean re-evaluation on that basis: the default state of all rocket launches is that the rocket may explode upon ignition.
The environmental suit is motivated by people who have had an axe to grind with Elon Musk specifically (as opposed to SpaceX) unifying up with the regular environmentalist opposition, but neither has a valid claim here: a rocket failure resulting in destruction of the rocket and the facility is part and parcel of having any area performing launch operations.
Talking about "confidence" is irrelevant because that's not how you do a safety assessment: the assessment is "what happens when a failure happens, not if". You can only factor in "confidence" if your mitigations would depend strongly on an expected rate of failure being achieved.
If an area of a launch site is so valuable as to not be allowed to ever be at risk of mishap from the rocket launch, then the launch site should not be there.
However, the launch site is there and has already passed review for launch operations from that location. The occurrence of a launch failure or damage to the site does not suddenly mean re-evaluation on that basis: the default state of all rocket launches is that the rocket may explode upon ignition.
The environmental suit is motivated by people who have had an axe to grind with Elon Musk specifically (as opposed to SpaceX) unifying up with the regular environmentalist opposition, but neither has a valid claim here: a rocket failure resulting in destruction of the rocket and the facility is part and parcel of having any area performing launch operations.
Talking about "confidence" is irrelevant because that's not how you do a safety assessment: the assessment is "what happens when a failure happens, not if". You can only factor in "confidence" if your mitigations would depend strongly on an expected rate of failure being achieved.