"Or maybe you do not need to make a tradeoff between environment and progress at all."

Of course you do, or does someone evacuate all the fish from the impact zone whenever an empty rocket stage slams into the ocean?

This is only a question of the degree of the damage we are willing to tolerate. Of course the precise boundary shifts over time.

Define easily

Most rockets have used flame diverters. Because it common sense that you do not want to spew debris and hot gasses in all directions (including towards your nearby fuel tanks). It is a well studied problem(1). Even tiny rockets like Electron have flame diverters (2). SpaceX decided that on the largest rocket ever they will do none of it. Zilch. Just let the exhaust hit the concrete pavement at supersonic speeds head on. The result was predictable and predicted, the rocket became a sonic drilling machine. What we didn't predict was just how far debris would fly. If they built a flame diverter of any kind they could have, get this, divert the exhaust in a direction that would not have caused issues, like towards the sea.

And yes, easily because since SpaceX lifts the rocket into position, they probably don't need to build an artificial hill, just the diverter itself, meaning it should be easier than for any other large rocket which relied either on an artificial hill or excavated. Excavation is hard for their location because of the water table.

But they were just not moving fast enough and breaking enough things.

(1) https://physics.byu.edu/docs/publication/4678

(2) https://youtu.be/P_tGKxL6CLI?t=31

> Stop worshiping techbros.

You know I read all this, and it’s good, but then I get to this last line and all I want to do is tell you to fuck off with your needless, baseless attack on my beliefs. I don’t give a shit about Elon but even if I did you have now contextualized this otherwise fine discussion you’ve written with hefty research into this invitation for a dumbass mudslinging. This is so stupid and undermines everything else you have written.

I would be curious to ask about the salience of the issue you’ve brought up. I’m not convinced fixing it would actually result in everything being fine.

For what it's worth I considered your original comment to be sealioning yet I still considered worth it to make clear that this was predicted and avoidable, and not avoiding it was intentional.